Portugal 1-0 Morocco: World Cup highlights and recap

Portugal beat Morocco 1-0 in the World Cup on Wednesday, June 20. Here are all the highlights from the match.

Portugal beat Morocco 1-0 in the second match of their World Cup campaign on Wednesday, a result which should be enough to see them through to the round of 16 with one group match left to play, against Iran.

They took an early lead through Ronaldo, who has now scored all four of their goals at this tournament, a close-range header after Morocco failed to clear a corner at the near post, but struggled going forward after that.

Herve Renard’s side dominated the ball, with Hakim Ziyach and Younes Belhanda both showing some nice flashes of quality, but they were unable to carve open any clear-cut chances, settling instead for a few hopeful crosses in the direction of Khalid Boutaib.

The only other good chance of the half fell to Bernardo Silva in the 39th minute. The Manchester City midfielder was played through by a nice ball from Ronaldo, but saw his powerful shot denied by an excellent one-handed stop by Monir El Kajoui.

Morocco continued to control possession as the second half got underway, and nearly had their equalizer in the 57th minute, only for Rui Patricio to come up with a stunning save from Belhanda’s header.

The story, however, was mostly the same has it hand been in the first half, with the African side controlling the game, getting into some good positions and then failing to breakdown Portugal’s defense in the final third.

The result was harsh on Morocco, as was their loss against Iran in their opening game, but it reflected their difficulty producing the telling final ball, despite so much good work in the other two thirds of the pitch.

Next: The best player on every team at the World Cup

Highlights

Portugal’s final group game is against Iran, while Morocco play Spain.