One reason every team at the World Cup can win
By Ty Finch
Morocco: The unknown
There won’t be an analyst, blogger or fan in the world outside of Morocco or Iran to pick any other country besides Spain and Portugal to make it out of Group B. Spain are sixth in the world according to FIFA and Portugal are third. Everyone knows how good those teams can be, and how difficult it will be to beat them.
However, sometimes the unknown is what can drive a team on more than anything else. That’s what Morocco are going to have to hope for.
No player in their recent call-ups to the national team has over 56 caps at the time of writing. On a national team, that’s an unprecedented level of unfamiliarity. It’s not as if Morocco have a new manager that wanted to make his mark or shake everything up, as Herve Renard has been in charge since February 2016 and took them to their first World Cup since 1998. He may know his squad inside and out, but to the rest of the world, most of their players are relative unknowns.
It’s not as if Morocco don’t have talented players on their squad, though. Captain Medhi Benatia plays for Juventus, and has spent time at Bayern Munich, Roma and Udinese in the past. Midfielder Younes Belhanda, likely playing as the number 10, has eight assists this season with Galatasaray, and has played key roles for the likes of Montpellier and Dynamo Kyiv in the past.
However, Morocco are up against it in their group alone. Both Spain and Portugal are powerhouses, and a vastly different type of “unknown” is going to have to take place for them to win it all. Maybe Ronaldo sleeps in on game day, or Spain’s bus fails to even reach the stadium. Whatever it is, Morocco are going to need a lot of it.