Football: Soccer-Morocco looking to exceed expectations again in ‘special’ France clash

ADELAIDE (Reuters) – Morocco’s clash with favourites France in the Women’s World Cup on Tuesday will be a special occasion for their players and coach Reynald Pedros as the tournament debutantes aim to continue their fairytale run by reaching the quarter-finals.

In one of the most unexpected outcomes of an already unpredictable group stage, Morocco reached the knockouts as runners-up to Colombia in Group H after beating the South Americans 1-0 while second-ranked Germany failed to advance.

Pedros, 51, is a former France international and said he was looking forward to taking on the country of his birth when the two teams face off in the last 16 in Adelaide.

“I am French but my heart is with Morocco,” Pedros told reporters on Monday. “It’s been three years since we’ve been working hard to get to these incredible objectives … It’s not a problem for me to win against France.

“I will do everything for us to qualify for the quarter-finals.”

Pedros won consecutive Champions League titles as manager of Olympique Lyonnais in 2019 and 2020. Six members of France’s World Cup squad played under him at Lyon, including captain Wendie Renard and all-time top scorer Eugenie Le Sommer.

“A few of us are bi-national and some of us play in France, so we know the players well,” said defender Nesryne El Chad, one of six players in the Morocco squad plying their trade in France. “This match will be special for us.”

Morocco, the first Arab nation to compete at the tournament, were thrashed 6-0 by Germany in the opener but 1-0 upsets of higher-ranked South Korea and Colombia propelled them into the last 16.

Pedros said after the Colombia game that he had the advantage of knowing the France team “perfectly”. Beating France, ranked fifth in the world, would be a remarkable achievement for 72nd-ranked Morocco.

“This round of 16 is against an amazing opponent,” Pedros said. “We have to go up a notch with the game that we have done against Colombia, which was already a very high level for us.

“We have to go beyond what we can do and what we can expect, because we would like to qualify for the quarter-finals.

“Of course, if we had been eliminated with six points, it would still have been fantastic for us. But we went further. Football is incredible, and you can never know what’s going to happen.”

(Reporting by Hritika Sharma in Hyderabad; editing by Robert Birsel)