Les Blues ended Morocco’s adventure to an end and sealed their second straight World Cup final 2-0. Theo Hernandez opened the game with an early-goal score. Follow for more world soccer news here!
It was a great World Cup adventure for the historical African team, Morocco. They showcased to the world that they can compete, that they are not far from the top tiers of World football. The Morocco manager Walid Regragui addresses that his team’s 2-0 semi-final defeat to France doesn’t take away their efforts, sacrifices, and their performances to prove to the World that they are far from being just a luck, rather a real contender. To watch soccer live click here!
“We gave the maximum, that’s the most important,” he said. “We had some injuries, we lost Aguerd in the warm-up, Saiss, Mazraoui during the game, but there are no excuses.”
The Atlas Lions suffered a blowout from the reigning World Champion France, however they performed well in this game: they limited the offensive prowess of Les Blues’ main scorers in Giroud and Mbappe. However, this World Champion has a lot of players to step up like Theo Hernandez who obviously cracked Morocco’s defense early in the match.
“We paid for the slightest mistake. We didn’t get into the game well, we had too much technical in the first half, and the second goal killed us, but that doesn’t take away everything we did before,” Coach Regragui said. “We realize that we made a great achievement already. We know that the media, social media, and on TV, we saw the picture, and saw that everyone was proud of us in our country.”
Despite Theo Hernandez starting the game with an early goal and an advantage for France, Regragui did not rattled and instead made a quick tweak and adjustments on defense that led to France being placed into pressure and stagnant offense. However, the substitute Randal Kolo Muani became the unknown hero for France when he registered a 79th minute goal that ended the match and secured the path to finals for Les Blues.
“At a World Cup, this was perhaps one step too far. Not in terms of quality or tactics, but physically we came up short tonight. We have too many players who were at 60 percent and they have been for a few games now. Today we had a lot of possessions and they punished us when we had the ball. Congratulations to France, we are going to support them now,” Regragui told reporters after the match.
This upcoming Sunday, France will play their second straight World Cup finals and ready to defend their title against the favorite and hungry Argentina and Lionel Messi eager to take home the World Cup trophy to South America for the first time in 16 years. On the other hand, Morocco will have a third palace battle against Croatia on Saturday and they will try to make history as the first African team to end the World Cup campaign with a podium finish.
Morocco fans are loud and proud of the campaign of the Atlas Lions in the World Cup that ended in a semi-final defeat and many believe that the effort of the team in Qatar showed that the future is bright for Morocco as they showcased how great they are by upsetting contenders like Belgium, Spain, and Portugal.
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