I spent most of December and January in Rabat, where many of the Africa Cup of Nations games were being played. I live close enough to the stadium that, in another moment, I would have given anything to be there. In 2022, I had watched Morocco lose to France in the semifinals of the World Cup from a small, crowded café in Tangier, shedding a few tears among strangers whom I’d never see again. This time, however, I didn’t feel any excitement. The streets weren’t overrun with fans. Rabat was just its usual sleepy self. If anything, the general vibe was relatively muted.
The mood bore the friction of the previous weeks. Earlier in the winter, youth-led demonstrations had spread across Morocco, from Oujda to Agadir, driven by a collective frustration over unemployment, failing public services, and the rising cost of living. The movement, known as GenZ212 (212 is the country’s international dialing code) was decentralized and largely organized through Discord servers and social media.
This was a younger Morocco articulating its most basic demands. Young protesters denounced underequipped hospitals, dysfunctional schools, and increasingly grim career prospects. Football was also ever-present. One sign read, “My health and education are more important than the 2030 World Cup.” (Morocco is one of the host countries for that tournament.) Another pointed out that sporting stadiums seemed better funded than public hospitals. Their message was clear: This is a generation that wants explicit improvements in their day to day life, not just in the façade shown off to foreigners. The demonstrations were unsurprisingly met with arrests, repressive violence, and a now-familiar cycle of limited concessions.
Support for the protests fizzled out just as the first game of the Africa Cup of Nations approached. A strange cognitive dissonance then took hold of the country. Support for thousands of jailed protesters was drowned out by a performative, feverish nationalism. The shift felt imposed: a top-down push to redirect attention. The protests were rapidly erased from collective memory. Eventually, all that mattered, it seemed, was that Morocco should win.
Football, after all, can be a potent symbol of national progress. A stadium only takes a few years to build, yielding immediate and visible results. A national team can be assembled, trained, and deployed, easier to repair than a healthcare system and more exciting to showcase than education reform. The narrative writes itself: We were once weak. Now we are strong.
This fervor was not entirely unjustified. After decades of footballing decline—particularly between 1998 and 2018, a period when the country failed to qualify for a World Cup and consistently underperformed in African competitions—national attachment to the sport has been rewarded by real progress. King Mohammed VI’s football academy has produced a new generation of elite players, including the striker Youssef En-Nesyri and center-back Nayef Aguerd. Scouting networks brought in talent from the diaspora in the form of Achraf Hakimi, Noussair Mazraoui, and Sofyan Amrabat, players who grew up in Europe but chose to represent Morocco. Youth teams have begun to win continental and international competitions. The level of play improved. The results were apparent.
For a moment, it seemed the country was heading in that direction as well. Morocco was expanding its influence, in step with King Mohammed VI’s royal visits and investments across the continent. It rejoined the African Union in 2017 after a thirty-three-year absence and strengthened ties with sub-Saharan countries. By 2022, it was presenting itself as a regional leader, with Attijariwafa Bank growing its operations abroad and a cross-border road initiative in the works throughout Africa.
So that year, when Morocco defeated Spain and Portugal to reach the semifinals of the World Cup in Qatar, I was just one among millions who fell in love with the national team (and the doting mothers who accompanied them). We were the underdogs, disciplined and fearless, reclaiming what an African team could do on the world stage. For a moment, our national team was adored everywhere I went: It felt as though fans across the Arab world and much of Africa saw themselves in them.
A lot of the enthusiasm reads differently now. In the months leading up to the Africa Cup of Nations, a close friend in Rabat began sending me images on WhatsApp of players’ faces printed on condiment bottles, billboards, and pretty much anything that could carry a slogan. As the tournament progressed, our exchanges soon developed into a game of tote bags, storefronts, and branded objects. It felt like a coordinated attempt to funnel nationalism into profits. Even ASSAD the lion, our beloved mascot, was roped into the scheme.
By the time Morocco reached the final against Senegal, the stakes had intensified. In the lead-up to the game, Senegalese officials raised concerns about logistics, accommodation, and refereeing. The buildup was marked by mistrust, with both sides entering the match already on edge. The match was marred by complete chaos: towel-related superstitions and antics, a controversial penalty decision, a mid-game boycott by protesting Senegalese players, Brahim Díaz’s missed penalty, and a Senegalese goal in extra time to win the cup. In the weeks that followed, the Moroccan federation challenged the outcome. A ruling was issued. Senegal was declared to have forfeited, and Morocco was awarded a 3-0 victory.
Online, the same conspiracies that had circulated throughout the tournament—about refereeing decisions, about host favoritism—exploded. It became clear that Moroccans were watching an entirely different game from the rest of the world. When the outside world pointed out controversial calls, Moroccans perceived an international bias against us, one rooted in jealousy and bad faith. I was stuck somewhere in the middle of all of this: deeply uncomfortable and unhappy with the game, its discourse, and the direction the country was taking.
I didn’t attend that final; in the wake of the GenZ212 protests, with political expression repressed and nationalism imposed from on high, I decided to stay home in Rabat. In the end, the temporary loss felt like a relief, like a karmic resistance to a script that had been written for weeks. In the days that followed, what unsettled me most was the collective reaction of other Moroccans. For some, the anger toward Senegal was about a perceived affront, a humiliation of sorts. There were narratives circulating about Senegal’s reaction, about the decision of players to leave the pitch, about how there should be consequences. Others pointed to Senegal’s history of disputes and protests in prior competitions. These narratives, laced with resentment, revealed an underbelly of entitlement and supremacy.
Of course, none of this completely erases what has been achieved. The national team is stronger than it has been in decades. Our infrastructure will shine during the 2030 World Cup. Women’s football is becoming increasingly popular, and the love for their national team is genuine. For many Moroccans, football has recently offered a rare sense of collective pride in a country where other forms of progress feel unevenly distributed.
This year, as the national team returns to the World Cup, I find myself once again at a strange distance. They played against Brazil in New Jersey, not far from my home in Harlem. I didn’t attend the game—the attachment I’ve felt for my country since my childhood, strengthened in 2022, is still intact, but I no longer feel part of an audience that allows so little room for distance and dissent.
I think back to Qatar, when our players proudly held the Palestinian flag after each victory, deepening the sense that this was a broader victory. A couple of years later, a journalist in Gaza who had been displaced multiple times sent me a photo of a Moroccan flag flying above the rubble after Israeli bombardments. Even as Palestinians were being abandoned by much of the world, they had not forgotten us.