The son of Moroccan migrants, Achraf Hakimi, 24, was born in the industrial zone of Madrid, the Spanish capital. He was even invited to defend the national team of Spain, but preferred to play for his parents’ country of origin.
The choice proved to be decisive in the 2022 World Cup. It was Hakimi who was responsible for eliminating the team called Fury in Qatar. With a little dig, he converted the last penalty kick in the dispute for the round of 16, on Tuesday (6), in Doha, after a goalless draw.
Hakimi’s option for the formation of Morocco is symbolic, as it is in the opposite direction of the migration made by his parents. At the World Cup, several players born or raised in Europe wear the shirts of the countries where their ancestors came from.
For decades, European teams have benefited from leaps in technical quality driven by migratory flows that help form multi-ethnic teams.
France is the best example of this. In 1998, he won his first world title with a generation known as “black, blanc, beur” (black, white and Arab).
Zinédine Zidane, the biggest star in that squad and Brazil’s executioner in the final, with two goals in France’s 3-0 victory, is of Algerian descent.
The formula was repeated in 2018, in Russia, where France won the bi. Of the 23 summoned, 17 had foreign ancestry, among them again the main name of the team, Kylian Mbappé, son of a Cameroonian and an Algerian.
In the search for tri, the cast is also globalized. Five starters who played in the debut against Australia, for example, are children of migrants (Mbappé, defenders Upamecano and Konaté, defensive midfielder Tchouameni and winger Dembélé).
Of the 32 teams that went to Qatar to compete in the World Cup, only four did not have naturalized athletes: Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Brazil and South Korea.
Therefore, all European teams follow the French example with at least one naturalized player in their squad. Among the eight teams classified for the quarterfinals, only two, Brazil and Argentina, do not have athletes with this characteristic.
Holland, Croatia, France, England, Morocco and Portugal (the latter with three born in Brazil: Pepe, Matheus Nunes and Otávio) are committed to multiethnic training.
A survey carried out by producers of the Spanish podcast Fútbol Infinito pointed out that 137 of the 832 called up for the Cup (16.4%) were naturalized. This time, the team with the most naturalized players in the Cup is Morocco.
Half of the team was not born in the country, 13 of the 26, including Hakimi. When he decided to defend his parents’ country of origin, he simply justified his decision by saying that “it was the right thing to do”. “I just felt it would be better to play for Morocco. I’ve talked to my agent and my family about it. I’m proud to be a Moroccan,” he said.
As a teenager, the winger played for Real Madrid’s youth teams. In 2016, aged 18, he made his debut for the madridistas’ B team. A year later, he reached the professional.
In the main team, however, he did not have much space. He even gave interviews saying that the club did not give him the same chances that he offered to other boys. Outside Spain, he went through Borussia Dortmund and Inter Milan before becoming a reference in the Paris Saint-Germain team.
Currently, he is not the only one who plays in a big European. Like Hakimi, right-back Noussair Mazraoui, 25, is born in Europe to Moroccan parents. The right-back was born in the Netherlands, where he was revealed by Jong Ajax. He currently belongs to Bayern.
Striker Hakim Ziyech, 29, also born in the Netherlands, played in Dutch football between 2012 and 2020, when he transferred to Chelsea, his current club.
References in the team, they are mainly responsible for making Morocco equal the best campaigns of African teams in World Cups, reaching the quarterfinals, as did Cameroon (1990) and Senegal (2002).
The dream of the trio that symbolizes the formation of the Moroccan squad is now to overcome this barrier to reach the semifinals and keep the goal of the title alive. That would certainly make fans in Morocco and in several other countries happy.
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