Atlas Lionesses turn out to be newest Morocco crew to earn a World Cup upset

MELBOURNE, Australia — Morocco’s groups are getting used to upsetting higher-ranked opponents on soccer’s greatest stage.

With a 1-0 win over South Korea in Adelaide, South Australia on Sunday, the Atlas Lionesses earned their first Women’s World Cup victory of their debut event. The No. 72-ranked Morocco upset No. 17 South Korea behind an entire defensive efficiency and its first World Cup purpose: a glancing header from Ibtissam Jraïdi off Hanane Aït El Haj’s cross within the sixth minute.

Despite a gap 6-0 loss to Germany, the Atlas Lionesses are in competition for a spot within the knockout stage forward of their final group recreation towards Colombia on Friday.

“We need to savor the win tonight, all together,” Morocco head coach Reynald Pedros mentioned. “From tomorrow, this game is behind us. What’s important is what is going to happen against Colombia.”

In the lads’s World Cup final 12 months, Morocco strung collectively its personal run of upsets. The crew superior to the spherical of 16 for the primary time since 1986 and have become the primary African or Arab nation to achieve the World Cup semifinals. The crew caught consideration with wins over Belgium, Canada within the group stage, adopted by knockout wins over Spain and Portugal earlier than a semifinal loss to France.

The ladies’s crew has already made Women’s World Cup historical past as the primary Arab or North African nation to qualify.

PHOTOS: Atlas Lionesses turn out to be newest Morocco crew to earn a World Cup upset

“We have the same sense of determination and motivation, that this is a dream that’s going to come true, as with the Qatar World Cup, where the men were able to make history,” Morocco captain Ghizlane Chebbak mentioned earlier than the event began. “We hope we can replicate the same achievements of the men’s team.”

Defender Nouhaila Benzina missed Morocco‘s debut final week however made historical past Sunday as the primary participant to put on a hijab whereas competing at a senior-level international event.

A FIFA ban on enjoying in spiritual head coverings in its sanctioned video games for “health and safety reasons” was overturned in 2014.

Against South Korea, Benzina performed an element as Morocco rebounded from the lopsided loss to two-time champion Germany – a match Pedros described as “David versus Goliath.”

Shifting the crew’s mindset and rotating in “fresh legs” allowed the Atlas Lionesses to get off “to a blinding start” and create possibilities, Pedros mentioned. “We were very active, very aggressive.”

The Atlas Lionesses shocked the soccer world by upsetting the eleven-time Africa Cup of Nations champion Nigeria on penalties within the semifinals of the AFCON 2022 event. Morocco hosted the event and completed runner-up to South Africa after a 2-1 loss with over 45,000 in attendance, incomes a spot at World Cup being co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

In 2020, the Royal Moroccan Football Federation laid out a four-year ladies’s soccer funding plan together with youth improvement applications and funding for ladies’s skilled golf equipment, in hopes that its ladies’s crew, which had not certified for AFCON in twenty years, might make a press release on the worldwide stage. Morocco will host the AFCON event once more in 2024.

“We can have more and more players feeding into the national team,” Pedros mentioned of the federation’s improvement. “We’re talking about us, the first team, the under-20s, the under-17s. We’re talking about very long standing work we’re starting right now.”

Coming from a area keen about males’s soccer however traditionally slower to embrace the ladies’s recreation, Pedros and his gamers acknowledge the impression that every Moroccan match has.

“Those that love football have male role models,” Pedros mentioned. “What we want in Morocco is that those that love football have female role models as well.”

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