Walid Regragui Lifts Morocco to Africa Cup Of Nations Symbol Status

Morocco reached the africa cup of nations semifinals for the first time in 2022, and the Atlas Lions became more than a team. Walid Regragui said, “I think now the world is with Morocco,” as support spread well beyond North Africa and into a wider argument about identity and representation.

Regragui and the Atlas Lions

Regragui also said, “We want to fly Africa’s flag high just like Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon,” a line that matched the way Morocco’s run was received. Morocco was only the third team from outside Europe or South America to reach a World Cup final four, joining South Korea in 2002 and the United States in 1930.

The scale of that response showed up far from Morocco. Cafés around Riyadh were filled to capacity with fans watching the games, stadiums in Gaza City and Ramallah broadcast the matches on oversized screens, and cars in Beirut were draped in banners of Moroccan red and green. In Algiers, people honked horns in jubilation, while revellers in Baghdad and Muscat celebrated the run.

Riyadh, Gaza City, Beirut

That support crossed political and cultural lines. In Nigeria, the president said Morocco had “made the entire continent proud,” and fans gathered for mass prayer sessions in Muslim-majority countries as far away as Indonesia. Morocco’s squad is majority Muslim, and players celebrated victories with Palestinian flags and the Amazigh flag.

Those celebrations reflected a team that carried more than one identity at once. Abderrahim Bourkia said, “The international debate sometimes appeared too binary compared to the Moroccan social reality,” while the country’s football story kept moving beyond older limits. Morocco had advanced from the World Cup’s opening-group stage only once before 2022, in 1986, and had been eliminated in the first knockout round after that group stage.

Morocco’s Wider Football Reach

This year, Morocco enters the tournament ranked seventh in FIFA’s official standings, its highest-ever mark, with players from Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, and Manchester United in the squad. The youth team also won the most recent Under-20 World Cup last year, a sign that the 2022 breakthrough was not a one-off event but part of a stronger football cycle.