Behind the counter of his grocery store in the Goutte d’Or neighbourhood in northern Paris, Abdel was on a video call to his cousin in a village in the Atlas mountains. Morocco’s historic World Cup semi-final match against France on Wednesday was all they could talk about, and the mood could be summed up in one word, he said, shaking his shoulders: “Dancing!”
“It’s incredible to be the first ever African team in the semi-final. It’s only sport, but it’s bringing people together, from the grandparents to little kids,” he said.
Abdel, 48, was born in Paris to Moroccan parents who arrived in the early 1950s, when Morocco was still a French protectorate. They set up this grocery store in what remains one of northern Paris’s most diverse neighbourhoods. Like many people in France with joint French and Moroccan nationality, he saw the match as a win-win. “If Morocco wins, history will be made, with Africa in the final. If France wins, the reigning champions could keep their title. Either way, I have reason to celebrate.”
After Morocco’s national airline added flights from Casablanca to Doha for Moroccan supporters, he felt that the large diaspora in Europe could also be itching to get to Morocco. “If Morocco get into the final, I’ll fly back to the village to watch it there, to take in the atmosphere – this feels like in a once in a lifetime event.”
The unexpected semi-final clash between the world champions, France, and the outsider success story, Morocco, is being seen as deeply symbolic in France, which has for decades grappled with the notion of national identity and its colonial past.
At a moment when the far-right is the biggest single opposition party in the French parliament and its anti-immigration ideas are being echoed by other parties, Morocco’s team has been hailed as a symbol of immigration and the Moroccan diaspora – a large number of Morocco’s squad were born or grew up outside Morocco, including its coach, Walid Regragui, who was born and raised near Paris.
Dual French-Moroccan citizens in France say the match should not be reduced to a revenge story of a country that was under French rule from 1912 to 1956. Instead, they see it as a celebration of the many people who have diverse heritage in France.
Still, when crowds celebrating Morocco’s quarter-final win against Portugal gathered on Paris’s Champs Élysées for a largely festive evening after the quarter-finals, the far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour seized on the dozens of arrests made across France that night, and limited clashes in Paris, warning of “riots”. Policing will be stepped up on the Champs Élysées on Wednesday night.
The match comes at a delicate moment in the diplomatic relationship between France and Morocco. Relations grew frosty last year after the Pegasus project revelations that the phone number of the president, Emmanuel Macron, as well as those of several French ministers, appeared in leaked data, raising fears their phones may have been of interest to Morocco. The issue of the western Sahara and France’s visa allocations to Moroccan nationals have also caused tension.
The French media has written of “Maghreb United” as many Algerians and Tunisians in France join Moroccan supporters. “How could you not love this Moroccan team that came out of nowhere?” said Momo, a baker in the Goutte d’Or, who left Tunisia 14 years ago to work in Paris, but who would also simultaneously support France. “Split in two, like many.”
Marie, who owned a local haberdashery store and arrived in France from Cameroon to study business when she was 18, said: “It’s significant for people from many countries that it’s the first African team to get this far.”
“The Moroccan team has had an incredible journey to this point, which we may never see again in our lifetime,” said Rachid Zerrouki, a Marseille school teacher who writes on education. “Whether France or Morocco wins, I’ll be happy – that’s what dual nationality is all about.”
Zerrouki, 30, spent his first 15 years in Morocco and has since lived in Marseille. He said of Zemmour’s attempt to stir division through football: “Best to ignore it and focus on the joy. They try to make themselves heard saying: ‘Look at all at those Moroccans outside, it’s the “great replacement”, we’re no longer in France’. But that very much represents a minority, because around me all I see is people who are happy at Morocco’s success.”
Dr Brahim Oumansour, director of the Observatory on the Maghreb at the French institute for international and strategic affairs, said the match was a kind of local derby given the large number of Moroccans in France – including many students – as well as the many French in Morocco, including pensioners who retired there.
He said that in terms of colonisation, Morocco’s relationship to France had been different to that of Algeria. Whereas Algeria faced what he called “total colonisation” with a massive presence of colonisers, land taken and “a war of independence which was one of the most violent wars in the 20th century”, Morocco, as a protectorate, achieved independence “much more through negotiation”, which allowed its later relationship to France to be closer.
He said it would be “reductionist” to frame the match as post-colonial revenge. “It’s more a story about a team’s success. People who emigrated from such countries were often marked by the frustrations of not succeeding, or their states not developing.
“And when you see a team succeed, you have a tendency to sympathise with that and project on to that collective success, it’s about how the Maghreb’s diaspora can play an important role not just in sport, but in all sorts of sectors.”
