In his mind’s eye, Achraf Hakimi mounts a podium at the Parc des Princes on August 9 to receive a gold medal. In his case, the leap of imagination is a small one. Picking up trophies and gongs at this particular venue, the home ground of Paris Saint-Germain, is a matter of routine for Hakimi, the outstanding right-back in the outstanding club side in France.
The medal Hakimi pursues over the coming weeks represents, most probably, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an honour that would be set in a privileged place in his ample collection, a little apart from the Champions League winners medal, the domestic trophies picked in up Spain, Germany and Italy in the greedy years before Hakimi made Paris his home and collected French league year on year.
An Olympic Games gold with Morocco would make him more than simply the most decorated individual of what is building up as a golden year for his country’s most popular sport. It would elevate a select group footballers to the status held by compatriot track-and-field legends, heroines and heroes of Games past like Nawal El Moutawakel and Hicham El Guerrouj.
Hakimi is one of the permitted three over-age players in the Moroccan men’s football squad, the rest of which is obliged to be made up of players within the under-23 category.
And if Hakimi, 25, brings a unmatched resume in terms of the titles he was amassing from a young age with Real Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan and then at PSG, he has several decorated allies.
As valued as a senior addition to the young cadre is Soufiane Rahimi, figurehead of Al Ain’s capturing the Asian Champions League title in May and, at 28, earmarked as leader of Morocco’s forward line for an ambitious tilt at a podium finish.
With veteran goalkeeper Munir Mohamed, 35, called up for the goalkeeping position, reward for many years acting as patient back up in the senior Atlas Lions side to Yassine ‘Bono’ Bounou, there is enviable experience through the spine of head coach Tarik Sektioui’s party.
But like many of the coaches taking men’s teams around France, he has confronted problems in assembling a ‘best possible’ squad. Clubs are not obliged to release players for the Olympics, and many major European leagues begin their new seasons a week after the Parc des Princes final.
“There were players who were refused permission by their clubs, and that makes tactical planning harder, because the absence of a single player affects the balance of a squad,” explained Sektioui, head coach of Morocco’s Olympians.
Sektioui heard a firm ‘no’ from, among others, Real Madrid - he put in a request to include Brahim Diaz as one of his over-age players - Bayern Munich, who have retained Adam Aznou, and Real Betis for the highly-rated defender Chadi Riad.
But Sektioui was still grateful for what he called the determined lobbying of his football federation to clubs and, above all, to the rich reservoir of talent from Morocco’s Mohammed VI academy that supplies a number of his players.
Morooco are also blessed in the strong concentration of expatriate expertise employed in the French league. Because these are Paris’s Olympics, France’s Ligue 1 clubs have been more generous than those in other leagues in releasing players for the Games.
Besides PSG’s Hakimi, Amir Richardson of Stade de Reims, the Le Havre pair of Yassine Kechta and Oussama Targhalline, and the exciting Eliesse Ben Seghir of Monaco are among the head coach’s options in midfield and attack.
Targhalline is already a standard bearer of his cohort. He scored the goal that won Morocco the under-23 Africa Cup of Nations last summer - the tournament that served as Olympic qualification and carried the baton on from the senior side’s historic semi-final finish at the 2022 World Cup.
It barely needs reporting that Moroccan football is on the up, its ambition to make a global impact unconcealed, its successes ratcheting up at a brisk rate.
In Qatar 18 months ago, Hakimi was among the leaders of a breakthrough moment on the game’s biggest stage. Belgium, Spain and Portugal beaten en route to reaching the World Cup’s last four.
The under-23 triumph would be the country’s first Afcon at that age group; the same summer Morocco’s women’s team, at their debut World Cup, reached the knockout phase a year after they became the first Arab country to reach the final of a women’s Afcon.
There have been setbacks. The steep climb of the women’s team stalled at the threshold of Paris 2024, losing a see-saw qualifying play-off to Zambia.
Hakimi, meanwhile, will forever be haunted by the penalty he struck against the crossbar at 1-0 down to South Africa in the last-16 round at the senior men’s Afcon in February. Morocco, pre-tournament favourites, were knocked out at the first knockout hurdle.
For Hakimi, and for Abde Ezzalzouli, the winger who captains the Olympic side having contributed significantly to both the under-23s and the first team, the Olympics is a direct chance to make amends for that disappointment. They were both in Ivory Coast for the Afcon.
For a majority of those chosen for the Games, there are big future targets - a highway running, long and straight, from this summer to 2030, when Morocco co-hosts a World Cup.
Those who are 23, or under, now will still be in their 20s then, at peak age to shine for the Atlas Lions in front of a home crowd at the sport’s main showpiece. It’s a generation already carrying high expectations.
“The young players we have will, almost certainly, do better than we have done,” predicts Bono, icon of the 2022 World Cup side, “and they’ll become far bigger stars. Even now I look at Morocco’s talent reserves and see we could field three very strong XIs for the national team besides the current side and including all the younger footballers.”
There will be significant partisan support in France over the coming days, too, given the large Moroccan populations in Saint-Etienne and in Nice, where Morocco face Iraq in the final Group B fixture and, if Morocco progress into the knockouts, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon or Marseille.
And the intention is to go deep into the knockouts. The minimum standard, says Sektioui, “is to do better than in previous Games.” That’s a modest bar.
Since Olympic men’s football was designated principally an under-23s event, Morocco have qualified five times and, in their four previous excursions to a Games, picked up single victories. Two wins in their group should set them on a positive course at Paris 2024.
