, drawing one against fellow semi-finalists Croatia, and their unbeaten streak now stands at ten games since June 2022.<\/span><\/p>\nThe game against France was the thirteenth encounter between “Les Bleus” and the “Atlas Lions”. France had won seven of their prior meetings, while Morocco had won 2-1 in the first encounter in 1963, with two other games ending in draws.<\/span><\/p>\nMorocco’s rock strong defense has been a key component so far, as they went nearly eight hours of football at the 2022 World Cup without conceding a goal. Theo Hernandez was <\/span>the first player to score a goal<\/span> against the North Africans in the World Cup when they lost 0-2 to France in the finals on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\nEgypt was the first African country to feature in the World Cup in 1934, under the stewardship of Scottish coach James McCrae, but they were eliminated after one game, losing 4-2 to Hungary in Naples.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen the World Cup restarted after WWII, much of Africa was still under colonial authority, but as countries secured independence, CAF membership grew and Africa began to show its might.<\/span><\/p>\nThe continent skipped the 1996 World Cup in England in protest over the refusal to award Africa a place in the 16-team finals (African teams had to compete for one slot with teams from Asia and Oceania) and to protest apartheid South Africa’s participation in the qualifiers.<\/span><\/p>\nMorocco represented Africa in Mexico 1970, finishing bottom of the group after holding Bulgaria to a draw in their last game.<\/span><\/p>\nZaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was mocked in 1974 after losing all three group games, including a 9-0 defeat to Yugoslavia. Zaire’s Yugoslav coach Blagoje Vidinic took off his goalkeeper after seeing his side go down 4-0 after just 22 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"African sides have caused upsets at previous World Cups, but nothing compares to what Morocco have achieved in the 2022 edition in Qatar despite finishing fourth. Morocco saw off a star-studded Belgium in the group stages, then eliminated Spain in the knockout stages before beating Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s Portugal in the quarterfinals. These are teams ranked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[99],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66560"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66562,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66560\/revisions\/66562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracleglobe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}