Will King Mohammed VI obtain from the International Football Federation (FIFA) the consecration that his father, Hassan II, has always been refused, the organization of the World Cup? Five times already (1994, 1998, 2006, 2010 and 2026), Morocco has applied to host this major international football event. Five times he was beaten. We do not know if its cruelest defeat was the 1998 edition, when France, the former colonizing country, was preferred to it, or the 2010 edition, when, with the designation of South Africa, it was the dream of being the first country on the continent to host this planetary football rally has gone.
The Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRFM) has already announced that it wants to try its luck again for 2030. The FIFA vote must take place in 2024. There is no doubt that the sports performance of the Atlas Lions during this World Cup will be highlighted. . Just as will be promoted the unifying passion that has been triggered in the country, throughout the diaspora, but also in the rest of Africa and in the Arab world, by the exceptional career of the national team in Qatar.
Right after the quarter-final victory against Portugal (1-0), on December 10, Fouzi Lekjaa, the president of the FRFM, could rightly claim a ” present for all Arab, African and Maghreb supporters, wherever they are”. And to add: “I consider that the national team today embodies the cultural and historical dimensions of a great kingdom, under the leadership of a great king, and with the support of a great public and a great people. » Both football is in Morocco, as elsewhere but perhaps a little more than elsewhere, a major political lever.
Just Fontaine, born in Marrakech
Historically, football arrived on Moroccan territory before 1912 and the establishment of the Franco-Spanish protectorate. The balloon is already traveling in the suitcases of Europeans who are settling in the new economic concessions of the Cherifian empire. The Moroccan Athletic Club was founded in 1902. The immigration of French or Spanish settlement that followed would develop the practice, embodied a few decades later by the figure of Just Fontaine, born in Marrakech in 1933, who became a French international in the 1950s. , still top scorer in the history of the World Cup with thirteen goals.
The local populations will not stay away from the land for long. “The Moroccan elites close to the colonial power – sons of caïds or urbanized students – will gradually take over this sport, explains Stanislas Frenkiel, sports historian, lecturer at the University of Artois. Football will contribute to the construction of a “we”. “From the colonial era, a link was established between football and politics”, also notes Moncef El Yazghi, Moroccan historian and sports policy researcher, author of numerous books on the issue.
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