With a roaring World Cup moment, Morocco rolls to the quarterfinals
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RAYYAN, Qatar — One of those shared human experiences both goalless and breathless wound its way all the way to a thunderous noise on Tuesday night at Education City Stadium. The noise cried out for some nearby Richter scale for apt measurement. It came from the fan base that leads this 2022 World Cup in decibels per capita.
It came from the throngs and droves of Moroccans who have traveled here for this first Arab-world World Cup, and it soundtracked their side’s uncommon and uncanny mastery of penalty kicks, and of stopping same. Morocco heads for its first-ever World Cup quarterfinal after it knocked in three of its four tries while its goalkeeper, Yassine Bounou, known to his millions of friends and new friends as Bono, stopped two bids from a Spanish side, even one from a seen-it-all 34-year-old Sergio Busquets.
The score went 0-0 and 3-0 on penalties.
Spain, which knows its way to the backs of nets, never did find its way in any capacity.
Thereby did a country that hadn’t seen a World Cup knockout stage since 1986, when its beloved upstarts played in the fervent futbol Mexican burgs of Guadalajara and Monterey, slide past a country that conducted 76 percent of the possession in the match, and whose World Cup title in 2010 highlights its frequenting of said knockout stages.
Yet when the Moroccan star Achraf Hakimi nudged his penalty straight ahead and in while Spanish goalkeeper Unai Simón flailed to his right, the waiting Moroccan players went charging toward Hakimi and Bono with the kind of exhilaration that often turns up only in daydreams. They’re off to some heady frontier, against either Portugal or Switzerland in the quarterfinals.
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They ended up the happier ones in a neighborhood squabble played away from the neighborhood. Not only do they share 11½ miles of noncontiguous border, but their collision in the brackets here left the chance for bragging while boating through the Strait of Gibraltar. They settled that over here in the Middle East, where 44,667 shoehorned in to watch, seemingly 44,666 Moroccan judging by their songs all along and their jeers during long Spanish possessions.
The match of the neighbors went about as it might have — tense and taut with the goals all but walled. The hard, hard Moroccan defense, which technically still hasn’t allowed a goal in four World Cup matches — the lone goal against Morocco came on an own goal — often looked as if there were 14 of them. There came long stretches of Spanish possession around midfield that looked pretty but didn’t penetrate, the passing impressive given they could use only two of their appendages, but also at times seemingly unrelated to the idea of attacking the net over there.
Finally Spain, which also went out in the 2018 round of 16, did close down the whole fatigue factory in the 123rd minute with Pablo Sarabia, who had come on only in the 118th minute, got two mild chances. The first wound up cleared by Jawad El Yamiq and briefly looked like it might end up an own goal, which would have achieved quite some wretchedness. The second ached more as Sarabia fielded it low on the right, then sent a shot across with a tough angle that glanced barely off the post on the other — and left — side.
Penalties came as they long seemed they would. Morocco started. Abdelhamid Sabiri, a substitute since the 82nd minute, shoved his to the right and in with no fuss, as Simón slid right. Sarabia stepped up for Spain and smacked into the post he hadn’t hit moments before, as it went under Bono’s left arm and smacked the right.
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Hakim Ziyech, another of the Moroccan stars, knocked his straight ahead as Simón went left, making it 2-0 in the penalties. Carlos Soler, a substitution since the 63rd minute for Spain, saw Bono inch left, knocked his to the right and saw Bono lurch back left to corral it. That made things dicey.
On came Badr Benoun, who hit a weak one Simón collected in his gut. It remained 2-0. Then came Busquets, the last player left from Spain’s 2010 apex, when it fielded one of the best national teams ever, a generation which has given way to a set of pups whose better chances surely lie ahead.
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Busquets pulled his kick left while Bono dove squarely right, right into it.
It stood 2-0, with Morocco on the verge of something big and something else. Hakimi eased his shot ahead, and then he turned around and did a modest dance and smiled like mad and waited for his charging mates. Three Spanish players would have the tiny consolation of company for their misery.
Twenty-six Moroccan players would have celebrated lives up ahead, as the noise around them alone told of that.