“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” The words of Dr. Deming, a pioneer of systems thinking, perfectly encapsulate the problems faced by Moroccan football throughout the 2000s. 

At the turn of the century, on paper, it seemed like Moroccan football was in a pretty good place. In 1998, it was ranked 13th globally by FIFA. The team’s performance at the 1986 World Cup, when Morocco became the first African and Arab country to advance to the knockout rounds, was monumental.

Despite these early successes, Morocco would subsequently not qualify for a World Cup for the next 20 years. By 2014, Moroccan football would hit rock bottom, with FIFA ranking it 81st in the world—a precipitous decline. 

But as many of us know, by 2022 Morocco had risen to the top of international football. The team defeated major World Cup players, such as Portugal and Spain, becoming the first African and Arab country to advance to the semifinals. 

To me, the answer to Morocco’s football transformation comes down to one thing: systems (and I think Dr. Deming would be happy with that conclusion).

The reason behind Morocco’s 2000s decline was simple: Morocco relied on a series of golden generations that emerged around the end of the 20th century. After Morocco entered a World Bank Structural Adjustment Program to address the country’s debts in 1983, key sources of state funding for local sport were cut off as the country recovered economically. Without an effective system for replacing players as they retired, the sport would naturally start to decline. 

Morocco’s rise after that initial decline was more complex. As I began exploring this story, I came across a turning point: the 2008 Skhirat Conference. Recognizing football’s unique position to drive national pride and social cohesion across a young demographic, the King took the rare step of intervening directly, calling for reforms in football governance and investment at all levels in what is now known as the Royal Letter 2008. The letter attributed the sport’s decline to corruption and mismanagement, as well as the decentralized nature of sports across the country. The King argued that Moroccan football’s problem was not talent, but the absence of a national system to develop it. 

The first and most consequential change was the appointment of Fouzi Lekjaa as president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) in 2014. Despite Lekjaa’s middle-class origins, the Berkane native very quickly took to politics, developing his reputation as a shrewd and clever leader. Lekjaa spent years as Director of the Budget at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, while on the pitch, he served as president of RS Berkane, bringing crucial fiscal governance to state sports policy and guiding his club to a historic 2012 Botola Pro promotion. As FRMF president, Lekjaa stated that going forward, Moroccan football would rely on a three-pronged approach: facilities, talent, and well-trained staff.

An early example of this approach was the opening of the Mohammed VI Football Academy in Salé in 2009 as a 140 million dirham ($14.4 million USD) project aimed at developing homegrown talent. In the following years, alumni such as Azzedine Ounahi and Youssef En-Nesyri would go on to represent Morocco at the 2022 World Cup, while many others joined the U17 and U20 teams.

The federation pushed clubs to strengthen their youth-development structures, creating more organized pathways to identify and train young players, while academy staff scouted talent nationwide. The academy’s first director, Nasser Larguet, would travel the country with his team, observing 15,000 young players and ultimately selecting 37 to come and train at the academy. This pipeline showed Morocco could grow talent at home, rather than relying solely on the diaspora. 

Yet, the diaspora remains a major source of talent for Moroccan football. The 2026 World Cup prompted headlines that Morocco was the first team in World Cup history to feature a lineup of players who were all born outside of the country they represented. But this headline reflects a longer-term strategy: with around 15% of all Moroccans living abroad, primarily in Europe, Morocco spent years building an extensive diaspora scouting and recruitment network. The system would identify eligible talent at a young age, with coordinator Rabie Takassa saying that their network identifies talent as early as eight years old. By leveraging both home-grown and diaspora talent, Morocco built two talent pipelines that fed into national teams, broadening the pool of players available to the federation.

This system would go on to work. Yassine Bounou was ranked 4th on the list of the 2026 tournament’s top-performing goalkeepers, according to the FIFA Power Rankings. He spent years playing with Wydad AC in Casablanca before transitioning to European football. Through the other pipeline, Brahim Diaz would develop his skills at Málaga CF and then Manchester City’s academy, representing Spain multiple times at the youth level. Both opted to play for the Moroccan national team at the senior level. 

Some may argue that Morocco is simply witnessing another “random” golden generation. Yet the U20 team’s 2025 World Cup victory and the senior team’s 2026 quarterfinal run suggest a more systematic change. Morocco proved it could consistently play at the level of football’s best, matching Brazil and defeating the Netherlands. The Kingdom exited the tournament ranked 6th globally by FIFA, a striking contrast with its 81st-place ranking in 2014.

The challenges facing African football often extend beyond a lack of talent to the systems needed to develop players and bring them to the global stage, especially at a senior level. Nigeria, for example, holds the record for the most U-17 World Cup wins, but this hasn’t translated to comparable success at the senior level. The gap highlights a broader challenge facing African football federations: developing talent at the youth level is only a part of the task. Moroccan football offers a case study for the rest of the continent, an example of how systems can drastically improve a country’s football fortunes. 

Morocco would begin its journey to becoming a football powerhouse when it stopped waiting for golden generations to spontaneously emerge and began building the systems needed to constantly find and develop the talent required to compete at the highest level.