The Morocco-France World Cup match has complex political baggage

Morocco’s trip to the World Cup semi-finals has all the makings of a fairy tale. Game after game in Qatar, the drab North African side improbably outclassed their favored opponents, sailing to victory with tenacity, bravado and an abundance of talent. Their triumphs have led to moments of significance: scenes of joyous celebration in cities in Morocco and beyond as the Atlas Lions became the cause celebre of the Middle East, the Arab world and North Africa.

In Doha, the main stage of the tournament, the first African and Arab team to reach this stage of a World Cup are the toast of the city. In European capitals, a broader North African immigrant diaspora has taken to the streets to celebrate their success. In the stadiums, Morocco’s work ethic and determination, as well as the bravery of numerous players who played through injuries, has been matched by their perceived sweetness and kindness. Some of the most viral World Cup videos are of Moroccan players hugging and dancing with their mothers on the pitch after a victory.

Morocco’s underdog heroism has been epitomized by their coach, Walid Regragui, who took charge of the national team last August after a successful run at national level. Maher Mezahi, a journalist who is an expert on North African soccer, detailed how Frenchman Regragui is part of a new wave of sports leadership on the continent. “He represents all that is right in African football: he is young, competent, cosmopolitan, fearless and a pan-Africanist at heart,” Mezahi wrote.

Ahead of Morocco’s epic semifinal clash with France on Wednesday, Regragui introduced his team as the proverbial good guys in a Hollywood drama. “We have made our people and our continent so happy and proud,” Regragui told reporters. “When you see Rocky, you want to support Rocky Balboa and I think we are the Rocky of this World Cup. I think that now the world is with Morocco”.

The World Cup semifinals come with two giants and two dreamers

But it’s not just good sporting vibes that drive support for Morocco. On its way to the precipice of a World Cup final, Morocco has defeated a succession of European powerhouses: first Belgium, then neighboring Spain across the Straits and finally Portugal in the quarterfinals. Now Morocco is set to meet France, which controlled the North African nation as a protectorate for more than four decades in the first half of the 20th century.

For many people in the Middle East, Africa and the decolonized world in general, the Moroccan team is “fighting a symbolic war,” argued Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus. It’s one that taps into “a lingering sense of insult,” she said, “a collective wound to his pride and history” that stings to this day.

The dizzying growth of support for Morocco has touched various forms of solidarity from the “Global South”. There is the pan-Arab jubilation that has followed the Moroccan team throughout the games in Qatar, underscored by the ubiquitous embrace of the Palestinian flag as emblem of a broader sense of Arab unity and struggle. There is African pride in the continent’s World Cup pioneers and Amazigh, or Berber, pride by those rooted in North African indigenous traditions and cultures. And there is also a surge of Muslim enthusiasm for a team that routinely kneels in prayer after a game.

The sense of delight at Morocco taking out the traditional heavyweights of Europe is inescapable. Moroccan memes abound on social media reliving the 8th century Islamic conquests of yesteryearcrossing the Pyrenees after defeating both nations of the Iberian Peninsula.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. The global embrace of Morocco as the champions of the post-colonial world has obscured the extent to which Morocco itself engages in an ongoing form of colonialism: its disputed occupation of Western Sahara. “Even in moments of great regional and continental ecstatic jubilation, jubilation that has significant anti-colonial resonance, we also have to appreciate that the Moroccan state itself occupies the uncomfortable position of having been colonized but also being a colonizer,” Marks said.

Of course, the Moroccan national team is not a reflection of the Moroccan state, as fans around the world recognize. “If we focus on politics, Morocco is an enemy after choosing Israel as its friend,” Miloud Mohamed, a taxi driver in Algiers, told Voice of America, referring to Morocco’s entry into diplomatic normalization agreements with Israel. “But football is not about politics. That is why I have supported Morocco in this World Cup”.

Then there is the Moroccan diaspora of approximately 5 million people, largely centered in Western European countries. Most of Morocco’s 26-man squad was born outside of Morocco, mainly in countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Considering where most of Morocco’s stars play, it is a team from Europe, but not for Europe.

In France, the impending showdown with Morocco has reignited the political tensions that have swirled around soccer in the country for more than two decades. Far-right French politician Éric Zemmour went on television this week to denounce French citizens of North African descent who may take to the streets to encourage Morocco about his home nation. Other far-right and traditional-right politicians have portrayed these celebrations as security threats; there were reports of clashes between revelers and police in several European cities after the Moroccan victories.

Morocco’s World Cup victory raises a legion of Arab fans

The irony is that the France team itself is a reflection of multiculturalism that makes the French establishment uncomfortable. The team is drawn largely from African and Arab immigrant communities with connections to France’s former colonies. And over the years, its success has been seen as a farewell to French integration and its failures as an indictment of the “separatist” tendencies of certain minorities. As the famous French striker Karim Benzema said: “If I score, I am French; If I don’t, I’m an Arab.”

The current Moroccan and French teams are no strangers to each other. Some of the players on both sides grew up in the same neighborhoods, attended the same superclubs and indulged in the same flashy lifestyle of soccer’s super-rich. Their national team affiliations belie a shared context.

France’s political elite still wrestle with the concept of hyphenated identities in a country that is institutionally color-blind (though, in practice, not entirely). French President Emmanuel Macron, who will attend Wednesday’s semi-final in Qatar, even lamented the alleged infiltration of American “identity politics” among some of France’s minority communities.

But Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French jurist and political commentator of Algerian descent, told me that the France-Morocco clash will showcase a generation of athletes who have moved further in the identity conversation, no matter what the political class says. .

“There is a generation that is connected to the rest of the world, that is creating its own French identity, made up of multiple cultures,” Alouane said. He added that the Moroccan national team, which includes players who could have represented France, “is the crystallization of this hyphenated identity at its peak, an acknowledgment that we live in a globalized world where you can choose the team you want to play for for various reasons.” reasons. .”

That is an understanding that does not sit well with some. “In right-wing circles, they keep telling you that you don’t belong, that you’re not integrated enough,” Alouane said. “Then you play for the national team and they warn you that there are too many Arabs or blacks on the team. Of course, that changes when you win.”

“At one point,” he concluded, “the people who have an identity problem are not who you think.”