AAt the end of the third stoppage time, the ball was still in the Moroccan goal. Forty-five minutes had passed since the final whistle, the Al Thumama Stadium almost empty, but there were two who were still playing football, all alone. One was one of the great Moroccan heroes of the evening, goalkeeper Bono in his blue jersey, the other was quite small but wore Bono’s gloves and made him look a little bit smaller as he kicked the ball across the pitch and back and forth stumbled to the ground again. When Bono Jr. kicked the ball into the empty goal with his father just watching, the last remaining spectators cheered again – this goal against Morocco was also a moving one for Morocco.
Scenes like this are common in stadiums around the world, but on this special stage, in this special moment, it was still a precious detail that reminded you that football, despite everything, is also a game – especially when you Scene countercut with scenes of frenetically celebrating Moroccans and other Arabs and Africans around the globe and the importance attached to this event.
The collective outcry in the already deafening noise of the Al-Thumama Stadium after the final whistle of this World Cup quarter-final against Portugal was at the same time the cry of African-Arab football that went around the world.
A little later Bono, whose real name is Yassine Bounou, was sitting in the press room, still wearing his blue goalkeeper outfit with short sleeves. Next to him, his black suit swapped for a black training outfit, his coach Walid Regragui took a seat and the two couldn’t stop laughing. Bono should say what it was like for him to be on the podium as player of the match after a game against this opponent, with all his Ronaldos, Joaos and Pepes.
First he just wanted to say thank you, to the fans, for the great support, but above all to his team, which may not have the Ronaldos, Joaos and Pepes of this football world, but a few guys who make the establishment of this football world just that teach fear.
Like his father: The son of Morocco’s goalkeeper Bono practices his dad’s job after the end of the game.
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Image: Reuters
Then he had another message to go with it: “We are here,” he said, “to change the mentality, we want to get rid of this feeling of inferiority. We’ve done it. The generation after us will know that Moroccan players can perform miracles.”
The miracle, if you want to call it that, was largely being the first team from the African continent to make it to a World Cup semi-final. And on a small scale, not having conceded a goal from an opponent in eight hours of football (without stoppage time), but only an own goal – Bono Junior already deducted.
The man who is primarily responsible for it, however, expressly did not want to call it that. “It’s no wonder, it’s the result of hard work,” said coach Regragui, and he didn’t immediately jump into the storyline of the nameless Moroccans, Hakim Ziyech playing at Chelsea, Noussair Mazraoui at Bayern and Achraf Hakimi at Paris Saint Germain.
But he also enjoyed the underdog story that’s going around the world right now. “We are now the team that everyone loves at this World Cup because we show that you can do it even if you don’t have so much talent, quality and money. If you see Rocky Balboa in the cinema, you are also for Rocky and we are the Rocky of this World Cup.”
When it comes to the semifinals against France, on Wednesday in al-Khor (8 p.m. CET, in the FAZ live ticker for the soccer World Cup, on ZDF and on MagentaTV), it will be a special duel in many ways, but also very personally for Regragui . He was born in France, in the municipality of Corbeil-Essonnes in the southern outskirts of Paris, he played football with Racing Paris, in Toulouse, Ajaccio, Dijon, Grenoble, and also in Santander, he was around 50 times for the national team of his country in action.
