There was no need to miss it. For the opening match of the 2025 African Cup of Nations – which will be held until January 18, 2026 – Morocco, host country of the competition, stumbled for a long time against the Comorian rearguard, before finally taking the upper hand (2-0), Sunday December 21, in Rabat.
First in group A, Morocco will then face Mali on December 26, then Zambia on December 29, to hope to be able to secure their qualifying ticket for the round of 16.
What to remember
The cador. Brahim Diaz, but not only…
At the origin of the penalty obtained in the first period by Morocco, then the opening score in the second, the ex-Madrilenian deployed all his energy to launch his teammates into the competition. The Atlas Lions were also able to count on their midline, made up of the very complementary Azzedine Ounahi, Sofyan Amrabat and Neil El Aynaoui.
The thread of the match.
11e0-0 : Iyad Mohamed is guilty of a collision on Brahim Diaz, and offers a penalty to Morocco. Soufiane Rahimi takes care of it, hits him low, but sees Yannick Pandor return his attempt with a knee save.
19e0-0 : hit in the thigh a few minutes earlier, Moroccan captain Romain Saïss, hiding his tears from the audience who applauded him, finally gave way to Jawad El-Yamiq.
55e1-0 : Sofyan Amrabat takes his time to send a delicate cross to the attention of Noussair Mazraoui, to the right of the area, who clears Ismaël Boura, then crosses to the penalty spot. There he finds Brahim Diaz, who scores with a flat surgical foot.
74e2-0 : after a fluid passing game, the Atlas Lions are perfectly launched on the edge of the Comorian area. Anass Salah-Eddine finally adjusts a precise cross into the axis, where Ayoub El Kaabi surprises the opposing defense with a scissor shot which ends up flush with Yannick Pandor’s post.
The sentence. “What we want is for the public to really support us. If they don’t come (…) that to wait until half-time and eat the petits fours, we have nothing to do with them. »
At a press conference the day before the match, Moroccan coach Walid Regragui warned supporters trying to preserve their voice. And the more than 65,000 people who came to fill the Prince Moulay-Abdellah stadium did not do half-heartedly to support the Atlas Lions, never stopping to encourage theirs.
The score of the match. C.
The match took time to get going, and the Moroccans even seemed to have doubts at the end of the first period, when they returned to a few whistles from their home crowd. Brahim Diaz was finally able to correct the situation, followed by Ayoub El-Kaabi, to make their audience roar and raise the level of the match, too messy in its first act, which thus received a “C”, on our rating scale going from “A” to “E”.
L’image.
