Morocco, the African representative who was able to beat the best goalkeeper in the world and celebrate after 24 years | CHRONICLE

Already in his debut, Morocco he had left clear signs of how far he could go. To the current runner-up in the world, Croatia, she played equally -or even better- and got a very valuable draw. Now he knocked down one of the teams that lately exercised as a favorite in the World Cups: Belgium.

It was known that the mission to succeed was not going to be easy. But the Moroccan team took to the field fully convinced of achieving the feat. First of all, he had to make a last-minute change: Yassine Bounou, the goalkeeper who sang his country’s anthem at the protocol moment of the match, “disappeared” from the starting eleven after being replaced by Munir without the need to burn change windows .

Be that as it may, beyond that strange incident, neither of the two Moroccan goalkeepers was going to be as prominent in the match as Thibaut Courtois, the best in the world today.

Courtois, who had stopped everything in his debut against Canada -even a penalty-, continued on the same path this Sunday, responding to all of Morocco’s attacks with effectiveness and security. At least that’s how it was until the 73rd minute.

The African team had warned long before that at any moment they were going to celebrate a goal. In fact, when the first half was about to end, Hakim Ziyech managed to introduce the ball into Courtois’s goal, but the goal was canceled due to offside. Less than half a head ahead of his teammate Mazraoui -he interferes in the play- prevented him from celebrating.

Still, Morocco kept trying relentlessly, much more clearly than Belgium. And the effort finally paid off: Abdelhamid Sabiri scored the first goal with a move identical to the one that disallowed Ziyech and Zakaria Aboukhlal made it 2-0 in injury time after a great finish, which Courtois found impossible to stop.

Belgium did not react at any time, not even with Romelu Lukaku lurking above. The Moroccans defended perfectly, shutting out all the Belgian stars and maintaining their superiority in their own way to celebrate a world victory after 24 years.

In Russia 2018 they had been left with that disappointment, but history has taken a quite positive course in Qatar 2022. And it is that having prevailed over Belgium is not only a historic feat, but also this allows Morocco to lead their group like no other another African from the competition is doing it.

With four points, the Moroccans are just one step away from qualifying for the round of 16 for the second time in their history (the first was in Mexico 86′) and they have everything they need to achieve it. They have already passed the “most complicated” tests against Croatia and Belgium; now Canada is coming, which is also not a team to be underestimated. Quite the opposite.