Morocco shines at Qatar, other African teams show improved performance

Since the world cup competition started 13 different African teams have participated in the tournament.

The FIFA World Cup 2022, held in Qatar attracted 5 African teams. Africa as a continent was represented by, The Africa champions Senegal, Cameroon, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia.

This year saw a tremendous improve to African teams in that two teams qualified to the round of 16 stage, one of the best performances at the world cup since 2014 which saw Nigeria and Algeria reaching the round of 16 stage.

This was a better performance since in 2018 no African team qualified for the knock out stage.

Reaching the round of 16 for the two African teams is a significant progress, but what makes the football funs happier is having Morocco reach the final four, the performance that no African team had done before, breaking the record that were previously held by Cameroon 1990, Senegal 2002 and Ghana 2010 which was the quarter finals stage.

Reaching the semifinals for an African team in Qatar indicates that the continent has improved in terms of competion and is becoming a threat internationally.

Despite the the other teams being knocked out in group stages, they showed some very impressive performance for instance Tunisia beating France the defending champions 1-0 and Cameroon thrashing the 5 times world cup champions Brazil 1-0.

Morocco

Morocco have stunned the world after being the first African country to reach the last four level in the biggest competion globally having played with some of the great teams from the group stages.

In the group stage, Morocco played against, Belgium and won, Croatia and drew finishing top and conceding only once which was an own goal.

They knocked out Spain in the round of 16 before thrashing Portugal in the quarter finals, before falling against the defending champions France ending their dreams of reaching the finals. They also lost the play offs to Croatia by 2-1.

Senegal

The first African team in the tournament to reach the knockout stage after the final group match win against Ecuador. They won 2 of their last group matches to reach the round of 16 after having a bad start after being thrashed by the Netherlands 2-0.

Senegal hopes of qualifying for the quarter finals for the second time in their history after doing it in 2002 in Japan Korea were put at held after suffering a defeat to one of the tittle favorites England 3-0.

This was a good performance from the African champions who were missing their talisman Sadio mane who suffered an injury prior the competition.

Tunisia

Tunisia was in group D together with the 2018 champions France, Denmark and Australia. Tunisia opened the competition with a goalless draw with Denmark before being humbled by Australia in the second group game before surprising France in the final group game after beating them 1-0, despite the good performance they failed to qualify because Australia thrashed Denmark thus seeing Tunisia finishing third in their group.

Cameroon

The first African team to ever reach the knock out stage in the football most valued competition, that was in the year 1990. they are nick named as the indomitable lions, and they were grouped in the same group with Brazil, Switzerland and Serbia.

They were the under dogs in the group having the 5 times world champions. They lost their first group game to Switzerland courtesy of Embolo strike, a player whose origin is from Cameroon.

They drew 3-3 against Serbia in the second game before stunning Brazil 1-0 in the final group game, and became the 1^st African team to do so. They finished third in the group.

Ghana

They finished bottom in their group after suffering two defeats against Portugal 3-2 and Uruguay 2-0. They managed to record a 3-2 win against south Korea.

Ghana was the team with youngest squad in the tournament and despite failing to qualify they have potential of recording better results in the coming competitions.

After the FIF 2022 world cup came to an end, FIFA president Gianni Infantino lauded African teams’ performance in the competion” I want to congratulate Morocco, hat. And also, I want to congratulate the other African teams.

Senegal made it to the round of 16, Tunisia, Cameroon and Ghana. fighting until the last minute to qualify. This puts on display the level of African soccer. I am very happy.

The 2026 world cup which will take place in the United States of America, Canada and Mexico will have up to 9 slots for the African countries.