With representatives in cities such as Paris, Madrid, Manchester and Eindhoven, the Moroccan team is spread across the main centers of European football. It is on the Old Continent, not on the territory of the African country, that the base and style of play of Brazil’s first opponent in the 2026 World Cup are shaped.
The diaspora-based model reached its peak with the historic campaign in the 2022 World Cup, when the Moroccan team became the first African team to reach a semi-final. He finished in fourth place. Of the 26 players called up, 14 were born outside the country, that is, 54%, more than on any other team in that edition of the tournament.
Four years later, with a recent change of coach —in March, Walid Regragui was replaced by Mohamed Ouahbi—, this presence is even greater in the most recent lists, close to 60%, reinforcing the weight of dual nationality in the composition of the squad. The country was the first in Africa to qualify for this year’s World Cup, as leader of Group E of the CAF (African Football Confederation) qualifiers.
The strong connection with Europe also appears in the players’ daily lives. In the 2022 World Cup, 73% of those called up played for clubs on the continent. In the current cycle, this index rose to 79%. The movement is repeated in the formation. The proportion of athletes developed in European clubs rose from 69% to 82%, according to the website oGol, which specializes in football data.
This basis helps to explain the team’s recent performance. Used to competing in the world’s top leagues, the players acquired a tactical repertoire, intensity and experience in high-level games. It was with this combination that Morocco neutralized more traditional opponents in the 2022 World Cup, such as Belgium, Spain and Portugal. Until then, their best campaign in the World Cup had been recorded in 1986, with elimination in the round of 16.
In this movement, the space in the selection for players from the Moroccan league was reduced, from 11% to 7% of those called up. According to Mahfoud Amara, professor of social sciences and sports management at Qatar University, the low presence of athletes in the local championship indicates the difficulty of developing talent in the country itself and reinforces dependence on European football.
“The team’s performance does not fully reflect domestic football, as many of the squad’s main players have dual nationality and were trained in European clubs and academies,” Amara told Sheet.
Therefore, in addition to the short-term strategy for the national team, Morocco is developing a long-term project for local football. Since 2008, the country has started to invest in a more structured way in player training, with the aim of reducing dependence and strengthening the domestic base.
To a certain extent, the dependence on talents outside the country brings Morocco closer to the Brazilian model, also marked by the early departure of talents abroad. The difference is that, while Brazil trains its players and then exports them, Morocco often needs to look for them abroad.
The connection between Moroccans and Europe is not just a consequence of migratory flows. The Royal Moroccan Football Federation, led by Fouzi Lekjaa, is actively involved in identifying and convincing players with dual nationality, many of them trained in elite European centers.
The decision depends on identity factors. Born in Europe, athletes like Achraf Hakimi and Brahim Díaz, stars of the current squad, chose to defend their families’ country of origin after playing for European youth teams. According to FIFA (International Football Federation) regulations, a player only loses the right to change selection after playing an official match for the main team.
“Felt that [a seleção espanhola] it wasn’t the right place for me, it didn’t feel like home. It wasn’t anything in particular, but it wasn’t how I lived at home, which is Arab culture, being Moroccan,” Hakimi said.
The personal desire of the athletes combined with the institutional strategy of the Moroccan federation has consolidated the diaspora as the central axis of the national team in recent years.
This type of arrangement is not exclusive to Morocco. On a global scale, national team football has been increasingly shaped by migratory flows.
Off the field, the relationship with the outside world is also central to the Moroccan economy. Around 5 million Moroccans live outside the country, according to the World Bank. In 2023, remittances sent by this population represented around 8% of the national GDP.
From a football point of view, logic reverses a historic movement. For much of the 20th century, players born in African territories represented colonial powers, especially in Europe, in a context in which many of these countries still did not have consolidated national teams or international recognition.
Now, former colonies have started to compete for athletes trained abroad, taking advantage of family and identity ties to reinforce their teams. But there are still cases like that of France, which was in the last two World Cup finals full of athletes with African origins.
Champion in 2018 and runner-up in 2022, the team built its latest generations incorporating children of migration. In the 2022 World Cup, 19 of the 26 French players had dual nationality, highlighting how these flows operate in different directions.
