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World Cup 2018: Morocco — a team of Europeans

RABAT — The night of the Holland v Spain World Cup final in 2010, Karim El Ahmadi sat on a café terrace in his hometown Enschede dressed in orange, cheering on his fellow Dutchmen. This month, El Ahmadi will play in the World Cup for Morocco. In fact, when the team nicknamed the Lions of the Atlas kick off against Iran in St Petersburg on June 15, their entire starting 11 could be European-born.

The make-up of the Moroccan team exemplifies two themes, one sporting, the other social: the current superiority of western European football, and the awkward position of European Muslim immigrants, caught between two homelands.

The make-up of the Moroccan team exemplifies two themes, one sporting, the other social: the current superiority of western European football, and the awkward position of European Muslim immigrants, caught between two homelands.

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RABAT — The night of the Holland v Spain World Cup final in 2010, Karim El Ahmadi sat on a café terrace in his hometown Enschede dressed in orange, cheering on his fellow Dutchmen. This month, El Ahmadi will play in the World Cup for Morocco. In fact, when the team nicknamed the Lions of the Atlas kick off against Iran in St Petersburg on June 15, their entire starting 11 could be European-born.

Mark Wotte, who coaches Morocco’s under-23 team and is himself a Dutchman, lists the likely line-up: “We have a Spanish goalkeeper, the right-back is a Frenchman . . . I don’t think there’ll be one Moroccan Moroccan in the team.” That is remarkable, since Morocco’s population of 35 million dwarfs the European diaspora of about 4.5 million people of Moroccan descent.

It is also extremely rare. Many national teams these days have one or two foreign-born players who have qualified, thanks to a grandparent’s nationality or who have become citizens through living in a country for years. But 62 per cent of Morocco’s players in their qualifying matches were born abroad, by far the highest proportion of any team going to the World Cup, says the CIES Football Observatory. The second-placed team was Senegal with 40 per cent.

The make-up of the Moroccan team exemplifies two themes, one sporting, the other social: the current superiority of western European football, and the awkward position of European Muslim immigrants, caught between two homelands.

There was a high-profile dramatisation of this in May, when two German international footballers of Turkish descent, Mesut Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan, outraged many Germans by posing for photographs with the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ahead of Turkey’s election on June 24.

Germany’s manager, Joachim Löw, sympathised with his players, saying people of migrant origin sometimes had “two hearts beating in their chest”, which “wasn’t always so easy to reconcile”. Even after choosing which country to represent, players can feel torn.

Moroccan emigration to Europe took off from the 1960s. Most émigrés from French-speaking regions went to France, whereas Berbers from the northern Rif mountains (which had little economic activity beyond cannabis farming) headed for the Low Countries and, later, Spain.

Soon the diaspora began producing footballers. Morocco’s star at the 1998 World Cup, Mustapha Hadji, had emigrated to France as a child, and was playing for France’s under-21s when Morocco’s then manager happened to read about him in France Football magazine.

For years, Morocco’s recruitment from Europe remained haphazard. Many diaspora stars got away. Marouane Fellaini, now with Manchester United, chose Belgium. The Dutch-Moroccan midfielder Ibrahim Afellay was called up by Holland and Morocco on successive days. His choice for Oranje earned him copious abuse as a “traitor” and “fake mocro” on the popular website Maroc.nl.

The Atlas Lions were a team divided by the Mediterranean. Dutch-Moroccan defender Youssef El Akchaoui told the Dutch magazine Hard Gras in 2008: “The Moroccans from Europe all hang out together. You have two camps within the squad. It doesn’t always click on the field either. They (Moroccan Moroccans) always look for the most difficult solution, instead of passing simply. European Moroccans don’t do those weird antics. That’s the first thing coached out of you in youth football.”

The Atlas Lions often played “as if they’d eaten hay” (a pejorative Berber expression). After 1998, they failed to qualify for the next four World Cups. El Ahmadi, who, at 33, has anchored Morocco’s defensive midfield for a decade, says that when he used to fly to Morocco for matches, “I had the feeling, ‘We’re just going to play some ball. It wasn’t a holiday outing, but it did look like that. Discipline was lacking. And being a team.”

No wonder that, until recently, most Dutch-Moroccans preferred to support Oranje. The novelist Abdelkader Benali, who lives in Amsterdam and Tangier, and who can still recite the Moroccan line-up from the 1986 World Cup by heart, says, “I always thought Morocco played really badly. I was charmed by the Dutch team, whose style of play was much closer to me. And Holland’s players were always multicultural.”

There is a broader truth here: in football, western Europe is usually best. Western Europe has just 5 per cent of the world’s population, yet its teams took eight of the nine podium places (first, second or third) at the last three World Cups. Meanwhile African teams have stalled at the tournament since the 1980s.

Europe’s superior youth training is embodied by Morocco’s French-born captain Medhi Benatia, an alumnus of France’s national academy at Clairefontaine. Mark Wotte says, “On average, the Moroccan trained in Europe is better in every respect than the Moroccan trained in Morocco.

"Moroccan players always had skill, but the problem was ball-winning and the defensive aspect. With the local boys, I’m always working on decision-making.” He blames the weak passing of African teams partly on local conditions: “Pitches tend to be very bad.”

Many African national teams have long recruited from their European diasporas. In 2014, Morocco’s arch-rivals Algeria reached the second round of the World Cup with 16 French-born players in their 23-man squad. (Benatia, whose mother is Algerian, could have been among them.)

That same year, Morocco’s Football Association launched a campaign to “bring back talents belonging to the soil”. This echoed the Moroccan state’s position that diaspora Moroccans, even after generations abroad, remain the king’s subjects. Renouncing Moroccan nationality is legally very difficult.

The FA’s campaign worked. In 2015 the young playmaker Hakim Ziyech pulled out of a training camp with Holland, pleading injury. Holland’s then coach, Guus Hiddink, recalled thinking: “A shame, but I had the feeling his future with Oranje would come.” It did not: Ziyech chose Morocco instead. Holland’s assistant coach Marco van Basten called him a “dumb boy”, but now Ziyech has qualified for the World Cup whereas Holland have not.

Some players chose Morocco over their European homeland only after much agonising. Southampton’s Paris-born midfielder Sofiane Boufal compared it with “choosing between my mother and father”. Initially, he publicly hesitated to commit to Morocco.

“Les Bleus (the French national team) is one of my objectives,” he said in 2015. That earned him abuse in Morocco. In 2016, he finally debuted for the Atlas Lions. Still, he says: “I won’t forget what France gave me. It helped me grow up, it welcomed my parents.”

Young European Moroccans have a mixed identity, explains Benali. “They are ‘street’ and Muslim and Dutch. It flows together. They want to be respected for that.” However, he says, most Dutch Moroccans who grew up after the attacks of September 11, 2001 feel rejected by the Netherlands. Even if they were born there — even if their parents were — they are still almost invariably called “Marokkanen”.

Benali explains: “Geert Wilders (the anti-immigrant Dutch politician) tells them, ‘You don’t belong here.’ Now young people are saying, ‘Yes, we are Moroccans. In your face.’ For them, ‘Moroccan’ is a badge of pride. It stands for courage, for not going along with the mainstream. Morocco’s footballers are heroes to them because they strongly express Moroccan identity.”

Danny Cohn-Bendit, a football obsessive who led the Parisian student revolution of 1968, sees similar rejectionist tendencies among immigrant groups in Europe. He writes of young French Muslims: “These kids no longer put on (France’s) blue shirt when they go to the stadium or kick a ball on their housing estates, but they wear the colours of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia ...”

Dual national identities are complicated, but “Moroccan identity” is not one simple thing. Even Belgian Moroccans subdivide into Flemish, Brussels and Walloon Moroccans, says Benali. Morocco’s current team is a Babel of languages. Renard speaks to his players in French and English.

El Ahmadi does not speak French, the main language of the changing-room: “With some guys you speak English, or ‘Moroccan’ (the national dialect of Arabic), or Dutch.” Inevitably, he adds, “the Dutch guys hang out more in each others’ hotel rooms”.

But his fellow Dutch-Moroccan Sofyan Amrabat emphasises, “We’re all Moroccans. We even all look the same.” He says that almost the entire squad will be praying and fasting together during Ramadan, which ends on June 14, the day the World Cup starts.

Some fans in Morocco grumble when European Moroccans play badly: “They should pick local boys because they play with their heart.” But the “Europeans” have won over the fans, in part precisely because their game is so European, from their fast collective pressing tactics to their off-field discipline.

El Ahmadi remarks, “If you concede zero goals in the qualifiers, that says something.” Their French coach, Hervé Renard (one-time manager of Cambridge United), has even used surveillance drones during training. Sofyan Amrabat marvels: “Those drones see everything. Guys who didn’t go full out in the warming-up were immediately told.”

Wotte says, “Benatia and Ziyech aren’t seen as foreigners. They’re seen as our boys.” Benatia says he often sees kids on Moroccan beaches in pirated European club shirts that bear his name.

Morocco’s diaspora has embraced the team too. The unlikeliest people are planning Russian trips. El Ahmadi says even non-Moroccan Dutch friends have told him, “Send me a shirt, so I can wear it during matches.”

Adding to Moroccan euphoria is the hope that on June 13, Fifa will choose their country to host the 2026 World Cup. Morocco’s previous four bids to host all failed. This time, the only competitor is a US-Canadian-Mexican joint bid. Its loudest champion, Donald Trump, tweeted in April, “It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the US bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)?” Moroccans hope he will keep talking — and keep breaching Fifa’s rules against political interference.

Every summer, European-Moroccan families make the long drive south to the homeland, their cars packed with presents for poorer relatives. If Morocco’s bid wins, then in summer 2026 many of those cars will be flying two national flags. FINANCIAL TIMES

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