"This is where the future of football is. It's not in Europe, it's not in South America." Carlos Bilardo said that about Morocco in the early 2000s, drawing on a trip he made there in 1975 as coach of Estudiantes. At the time, it probably sounded like romantic nonsense. Heading into the 2026 World Cup, it sounds like prophecy.
Morocco reached the semifinals in Qatar in 2022 — the first African nation to do so. In the three-and-a-half years since, they have lost just three matches, and the last of those, against Kenya in August 2025, came in the African Nations Championship using a second-string squad restricted to domestic league players. The first-choice Atlas Lions are technically on a 28-game unbeaten run.
Why Bilardo believed Africa would lead
The logic Bilardo laid out was simple, and it has aged remarkably well. He traveled through Europe — Rome, Milan, Florence, Munich, Cologne — and noticed nobody was playing football in the streets. Then he went to Africa.
"In Africa, they play everywhere," he said. "So Africa has strong countries, like Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia, because people go out and play football there. And that's good, because it means they have technical ability."
Street football producing technical players is hardly a controversial idea now. In the early 2000s, with African football still largely dismissed on the global stage, saying Morocco would one day be a genuine World Cup threat took either vision or luck. Bilardo, now 88 and the man who won it all with Maradona's Argentina in 1986, had both.
Morocco in 2026: a genuine threat, not just a story
The Atlas Lions land in Group C alongside Brazil, Scotland and Haiti. On paper, progression is near-certain. The real question is how far they go in the knockout rounds — and anyone pricing them up as a long-shot title bet should think carefully before dismissing them.
Their Under-20 side won the World Cup in October 2025. Their senior team is battle-hardened and tactically disciplined. The pipeline is producing. The unbeaten run, even with its asterisks, reflects a team that simply does not lose football matches very often.
In Qatar, they were the tournament's great surprise. In 2026, on a wider stage with home crowds across three nations, they will arrive as something else entirely: expected.
