In Salé, on the outskirts of Rabat, the Moroccan capital, young people aged 12 to 18 train on the fields of an imposing football academy valued at US$65 million (R$324 million). With dormitories, ten classrooms and medical monitoring spaces, the structure is part of a network of more than one hundred training centers spread across the country.
In theory, the system seeks to expand access to high-level football. In practice, the funnel is narrow. With the capacity to accommodate 120 students, the academy named after King Mohammed VI selects a few dozen young people each year from among thousands of candidates from different regions of the country.
The initiative is part of a broader investment plan in sport, which, over the last two decades, has come to play a central role in Morocco’s strategy — Brazil’s first opponent in the 2026 World Cup.
“Football in Morocco is strongly embedded in a state-led model, which combines public financing and support from national companies,” he told Sheet Professor Mahfoud Amara, from Qatar University.
A specialist in sports governance in the Middle East and North Africa, Amara highlighted the role of Fouzi Lekjaa, one of the most influential men in African football, in transforming sport into a key element of the country’s politics.
President of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation since 2014 and vice-president of CAF (African Football Confederation), Lekjaa is also minister delegate for Morocco’s Budget, which gives him direct access to public resources and the ability to direct investments.
“Fouzi Lekjaa’s role, which connects football governance to political institutions, illustrates the close alignment between government strategy, federation leadership and economic actors,” said Amara. “This includes sustained investment in infrastructure, youth academies, regional stadiums and elite development systems.”
During a recent FIFA (International Football Federation) seminar, Lekjaa said that the federation’s work for young people is based on three pillars: facilities, talent and qualified personnel.
“The idea is to prepare them for life as professional players, so they can progress and join clubs,” he declared.
On a sporting level, the objective was to leave behind a past of frustrations. After being eliminated in the group stage of the 1998 World Cup — in which they also faced Brazil, with a 3-0 defeat —, Morocco was unable to return to the tournament until the 2018 edition. The team also missed out on three editions of the African Cup of Nations in the 1990s.
In the diagnosis of those who command football in the country, this scenario reflected the absence of a structured process for identifying and training talent. To achieve its first results, such as qualifying for the Russian Cup, Morocco needed to begin its internal changes two decades earlier.
The effects of this process are already beginning to appear. In October last year, Morocco won the unprecedented U20 World Cup title after beating Argentina 2-0 in Santiago, Chile.
Regarding the main team, after returning to the World Cup in 2018, the country will compete in its third consecutive edition of the tournament in 2026. The team is in Group C, with Brazil, Scotland and Haiti.
The confrontation with the Brazilian team pits a historic football powerhouse against a country that began to treat the sport as a national strategy only in the last two decades.
“Morocco’s success is rooted in long-term strategic planning that dates back to the national sports reforms of the 2000s,” recalled Mahfoud Amara.
Researcher Simon Chadwick, an expert in sports economics and professor of the Africa-Europe-Asia axis at Emlyon Business School in Paris, stated that, although Morocco is not a particularly rich country, it has the geography and resources necessary to boost its economic and political power.
This is mainly due to the fact that the country concentrates around 70% of the world’s known reserves of phosphate, used in various products, such as food, cosmetics and electronics. A large part of these reserves is managed by the OCP Group, the state-owned company and the largest employer in the country. The OCP alone accounts for around 11% of all investment made in Morocco and 3.2% of the national GDP.
Last year, the group reached an agreement with the football federation and private partners to create a “national training fund dedicated to the professionalization of training centers and the promotion of young talent.”
According to Chadwick, the project and its investors reflect Moroccan geopolitical ambitions, promoting the country abroad. The culmination of this process will be in 2030, when Morocco will co-host the World Cup, alongside Spain and Portugal. The event helps justify government involvement and investment of around 14 billion euros (R$82 billion) in the renovation and construction of stadiums and training centers.
“Morocco’s model is similar, but still distinct from that adopted by Gulf countries. The nature and scale of ambitions are comparable, as is the role of the State. The use of football as a tool for international projection, both for image building and ‘soft power’, is also significant in all these cases”, noted the researcher.
He considered, however, that Moroccan investment capacity is lower compared to that of other countries, such as Qatar, host of the last World Cup. According to Forbes magazine, around US$220 billion (R$1.09 trillion) was spent on organizing the 2022 World Cup.
“Morocco does not have large oil and gas reserves nor does it have highly financed and competitive local rivals. Therefore, it has used football as a basis to assert itself as a geopolitical leader on the African continent,” said Chadwick.
“Football is a central tool of ‘soft power’ and sports diplomacy. Morocco uses it to promote tourism, build the national brand and project an image of modernization,” added Amara.
Football-related projects involving a few billion euros have raised questions about the internal distribution of these investments. There were protests, mainly due to the fact that investments are concentrated in large centers of the country, raising doubts to what extent this development is, in fact, a nation’s project.
