Lionel Messi led Argentina to a World Cup victory after what most called the “most thrilling” and all-time great games in the 92-year history of the tournament. It was a classic battle between European and South American football.
Argentina drew first blood through Messi and Angel Di Maria, but not to be outdone, France’s Kylian Mbappe scored late in regular time. The score at the end of the regular period, 2-2.
Messi gave back the driver’s seat to the Argentines in the extra period only for Mbappe to equalize, 3-3, to take the classic match to a penalty shootout.
The 2022 World Cup was Argentina’s third tournament victory, having won the title in 1978 and 1986. It was Messi’s fifth World Cup appearance, but the first time for him to lift the trophy, and, most likely, the last for the 35-year-old.
Certainly, the 2022 World Cup was a financial success, which explains the smugness of Giovanni Infantino, the Swiss-Italian president of FIFA. The prize money added up to $440 million, with Argentina pocketing $45 million and runner up France ending up with $30 million. In addition, each team which qualified for Qatar 2022 gets $1.5 million. It is a relative windfall for the national associations, the players, and others in each national team. Players will receive hefty paychecks from the Cup, not to mention the endorsements to follow.
The smugness was also evident in the statement of Qatari officials who were asked to comment on the deaths of two migrant workers, a Filipino and a Kenyan, during the then ongoing tournament. The Athletic reported that Alex (complete name and nationality not reported) died after falling at his worksite, a FIFA training base. Other reports stated Alex was a forklift operator who slipped head first from a platform. At any rate, the Qatar World Cup’s chief executive, Naser al-Khater, reportedly responded: “We have a successful World Cup. And this (migrant worker’s death) is something you want to talk about right now?” The Athletic added that Khater reportedly said, “Death is a natural part of life, at work or in sleep.” So, that’s that for those migrant workers and their families. It seems that a template has been established for rationalizing one’s wrongdoing by hosting a high-profile sport event.
While everyone is of course focused on the thrilling championship match, the financial success of Qatar 2022, the dismissive and even callous response to the death of migrant workers, and other newsworthy events at the World Cup, there is no denying that the other big story is the performance of Africa, represented by Morocco.
Located in the northwest corner of Africa, Morocco has a population of 37 million, smaller than champion Argentina’s 46 million. Morocco became the first African country to make it to the semifinals of the FIFA World Cup. No matter that the Moroccans lost to France 2-0, which paved the way for the French’s mano-a-mano with Argentina — the Moroccans had already made history. And from that point on, as stated by Rory Smith of The New York Times in a Dec. 15 article, “regardless of which team (Argentina or France) emerges triumphant Sunday, though, which story line is reverse-engineered as destiny, on some level this will always be Morocco’s World Cup, the one that made it a trailblazer, a record-breaker, a watermark that will not fade. From this point on, a whole slew of achievements will be the first since Morocco.”
Morocco became the first team from the Arab world to make it to a World Cup quarterfinal. As early at that point, that achievement had already acquired great significance for Africa and Arab culture.
The road the Atlas Lions — the nom de guerre of the Moroccan national squad — took to the semis was, like all World Cup struggles, tortuous. The path to the exclusive circle of four teams started with a 0-0 draw against Croatia in Group F. The Lions went on to top Group F with seven points against Croatia’s five. Morocco had beaten Belgium and Canada. The Lions then turned back Spain, a former colonizer, 3-0 in penalty kicks to make it to the quarterfinals. Next came a 1-0 victory over Portugal for the historic entry into the semifinals.
By this time the Moroccans had already achieved a Cinderella performance and were up against another colonizer, France. The Moroccans’ magical run ended in a blaze of glory despite going down, 2-0.
Prior to the World Cup, most Baby Boomers associated Morocco with the movie Casablanca, named after the city with the same name in Morocco which was the film’s setting. The movie starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as former sweethearts involved in a complicated situation, the roots of which are traced back to Paris early during World War II.
As underdog lovers watched with fascination how Morocco dismissed heavyweights like Belgium, Spain, and Portugal, the inevitable question was asked: “How did a small country where 30% of the population live on $5.50 (about P300) a day get that far?”
Some, like David P. Woods of The Score.com, in an article entitled “What makes a country great at soccer?” (July 2, 2014), have theorized that there are several reasons for a country’s success in soccer.
First, is a big population base. Presumably the reason for this is that a big population provides a wider and deeper base from which to identify talent for high level international competitions. While success in international competitions doesn’t necessarily indicate the ideal of mass participation and inclusivity, somehow, the population factor is not an advantage in the case of countries with the biggest populations: China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. While soccer is popular in these countries, none of them has reached the World Cup round of 32. Reasons for such an aberration range from corruption in the sport to poor administration.
The second factor is the presence of a training infrastructure. An example of how the presence of the training environment can have positive effects on football development is Costa Rica, which has a population of about 5.4 million. Costa Rica’s best World Cup performance was in 2014. The country topped Group D which included former champions Uruguay, Italy, and England who were all ranked within the world’s top 10. The Costa Ricans advanced undefeated into the round of 16 and defeated Greece in a penalty shootout. The Costa Ricans failed to make it to the quarterfinals comprised of eight teams, losing to the Netherlands.
Like the Philippine setting, there are three main centers of activity in a Costa Rican town: the market, the church, and the football pitch. In the Philippines, it’s a basketball court instead of a football field. But the presence of hundreds of football fields in Costa Rica and thousands of basketball courts in the Philippines have vastly different results: the Central Americans have come close to getting into the quarter finals of the World Cup whereas the Philippines has not made it that far in world basketball.
The third factor is passion. The Moroccans are passionate about football. In fact, African and Arab nations are football fanatics just as Filipinos are hypnotized by basketball (but again with different results).
There are similarities, however, between Morocco and Philippine national teams in soccer and basketball. More than one half of Morocco’s soccer squad were born outside of Morocco but with Moroccan parentage. Morocco had its own diaspora, just as the Philippines has had one for decades. Half of the Moroccan players were born in Spain, France, Germany, and other European countries and play and are stars in the European professional leagues. The other half were born in Morocco and play in Morocco. More than half of the Philippine women’s soccer team, which qualified for the World Cup in 2023 in Australia and New Zealand, are “Fil-overseas” players — they have a Filipino parent but were born, raised, trained, and play in the US, the UK, and other countries.
And that seems to be a key factor — the continuous high-level competition and training in serious soccer environments. You can train all you want but if you are never tested in a variety of high-pressure, high-level competitive situations often, you will never go far in any sport. Tenn Saso and chess grandmaster Wesley So (when both were still Filipino citizens) are examples of the value of constant exposure to high quality competition.
Philip Ella Juico’s areas of interest include the protection and promotion of democracy, free markets, sustainable development, social responsibility and sports as a tool for social development. He obtained his doctorate in business at De La Salle University. Dr. Juico served as secretary of Agrarian Reform during the Corazon C. Aquino administration.
