By Eniola Olatunji PhDp
The Atlas Lions of Morocco on Wednesday forced the highly rated Kockasti (Checkered Ones) of Croatia to a goalless draw in the group F opening game in Qatar 2022 World Cup.
Coming with a rating of 22 and six appearances like Croatia that is ranked 12th in the world, Morocco had to fight for dear life with a challenge thrown by Iran that defeated almighty Argentina 2-1 and the country declared a national holiday for that feat.
Morocco did not join the world cup party in time as the country was annexed politically to France between 1930 and 1954 so their best result was to be at the round of 16 in 1986. The other results were that Morocco had become group stage appearance specialists being there four times in 1970, 1994, 1998 and 2018. Will they better their performance in Qatar?
The Croats are known not to play physical football like Africans but they are stubborn, strong and resilient which made them runner-up at the last world cup in 2018. They also won the Bronze at France 98. Three times in their appearances, Croatia was kicked out at the group stages in 2002, 2006 and 2014.
Against morocco, the Croats had better play with 64% to 36% ball possession meaning they were totally in control of the game securing 5 corner kicks to Morocco’s nothing and 17 fouls to 11 of Morocco meaning that Croatia despite their hard training are not good at all in set pieces this time around. The only yellow card of the match was flashed to Sofyan Amrat of Morocco in the 78th minute of the game.
Although we wait for what will happen between Belgium and Canada to know who is nearer to the exit door, the picture in group F may not be clear until the second matches of the group on Sunday 27th November when top on the schedule will be Croatia versus Canada at 5pm after Morocco would have faced Belgium at 2pm.
We await the German Machine to programme the Computer specialist Japan to a defeat this Wednesday at 2pm in Group E and Spain trying Costa Rica for size at 5pm but the Sunday encounter between soccer super powers Spain versus Germany at 8pm. A football match to plan to watch.
Eniola Olatunji reporting.
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