Morocco’s fans in the Arab world took the North African team’s 2-1 loss to Croatia in Saturday’s World Cup third-place playoff philosophically. In the Moroccan capital, fans were disappointed but pointed with pride to the team’s historic performance.
“They remain champions in our eyes,” said Soukaina Makkaoui, a fan in Rabat. “They are now among the four top teams in the world.”“We would have liked to finish third because the players deserved it after giving their all,” he said.
Along the way, the Moroccan team charmed many Arab soccer fans who saw in the team a reflection of themselves, with players waving the Palestinian flag after their wins and celebratingSeeing Palestinian flags fluttering in the stadium “was an indescribable feeling,” said Ibrahim al-Lilli, who was among thousands of fans in the Gaza Strip who gathered to cheer for Morocco on Saturday.
The games affirmed that the Arab street “supports the Palestinian cause regardless of what their governments do,” he said, referring to the Abraham Accord normalization agreements that four Arab countries — including Morocco — signed with Israel in 2020. Fans in the besieged Gaza enclave found a bitter solace in the fact that the northern Africa Arab country got as far as it did.In Beirut’s Tarik al-Jdideh neighborhood, where fans were also rooting for Morocco, Muhammad Shaalan said the team’s fourth-place finish is still a point of pride for the Arab world.
“They arrived to the final games and they defeated three of the best big European teams ,“ he said. “I bow my head in respect to them as an Arab team.”Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Beirut, Tarik El Barakah in Rabat, Morocco, and Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City contributed to this report.
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