It was a thrilling end to the just concluded U-20 football ⚽ World Cup. The Moroccan 🇲🇦 team were not to be denied- not that they were favourites though- as their unrelenting quality shined through against a beautiful Argentine side with fine talents too. It ended 2-nil to Morooco. Argentina's goalie was named the best goalie of the tournament, for some context.
They join Ghana as the only two African teams to ever win this competition.
Beyond this I want to applaud something that isn't quite the norm in Africa, which Morocco is doing now and been doing for years.
Once again 🏆 congrats to the champs. This is what you get when you intentionally develop your football from grassroot. That's the footballing project in Morocco. Imagine them in years to come.
Over 41 Million or Billion Dollars was invested into their football by their Prince in 2021. This is no joke. And it's not as if the project started I'm 2021, it started before then, which attracted the Prince.
See how all their dual nationalities are returning.
He also established players pension funds.
Morocco has the best Academic facilities and Sport stadiums in Africa.
This is helping their Morocco/Spain Morocco/France, Morocco/Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal babies return.
Even their coach, Mohamed Ouahbi was born and raised in Belgium. He was a certain club academy director previously– either the club that raised Doku or the one of Hazard.
I'm just hearing that he even has Moroccan roots.
Now he is back and doing wonders.
That's the beauty of having a dedicated project and a government which supports it.
Enter West Africa. The funny thing is that West Africa receives the highest funds from FIFA for football development, yet where are they? None really worthy of note. Big guns like Ghana and Nigeria are busy embezzling such funds for other selfish purposes. Only Cameroun and Ivory coast are doing some quite notabke investments.
Northern Africa have been doing better than the rest of Africa for years now and it's kudos to them. It's on record that the country – South Africa– about 3-yrs ago, began to copy the Moroccan blue print and it has yielded great dividends. Today they have qualified for the World Cup in a group that contained favourites– Nigeria. Now that's a South African team that comprises 99.9% of home based players! That's not normal in Africa.
So Morocco to the world. In the last three years:
🥇2018 African Nations Championship
🥇2020 African Nations Championship
🎖️4th in Qatar 2022
🥇2023 U-23 African Cup
🥈2023 U-17 African Cup
📜4th in 2023 U-17 World Cup
🥉3rd in Paris 2024
🥇2025 U-17 African Cup
🏟️Will be one of the host countries for the 2030 World Cup
✅Already qualified for the 2026 World Cup
📜For the first time, they qualified for 4 consecutive World Cups
📜1st in the U-17 World Cup 20 2025 in a zone shared with Spain and Brazil
🥇Under-20 World Cup 2025
Once again, congrats to the U-20 champs. We wish them well.
Cheers