During the participation of their teams in the 2022 Edition of the FIFA World Cup, Senegal and Morocco’s managers, Aliou Cissé and Walid Regragui, expressed their faith that an African team would win the world cup. Earlier, before the 2021 Afcon, Algeria’s coach Djamal Belmadhi expressed a similar hope for Algeria, the winners of the 2019 AFCON title.
The performance of Africa’s five representatives in Qatar 2022 showed that these hopes, exaggerated as they might sound, are not too unrealistic to be true. The five teams showed Africa has the right to dream big, though at the moment “big” cannot be synonymous with gold. But silver and bronze are fair enough for the continent.
Cameroon and Tunisia were both kicked out from the first round but before they packed their things up, they defeated the two best teams in the world: Brazil and France respectively.
Senegal qualified to the second round after a late-game defeat to the Netherlands and beating Qatar the host team and Ecuador, one of the best teams in South America. With such a performance, Senegal’s defeat to England (3-0) was a major disappointment.
Morocco’s performance was a five-star one. Finishing the first round undefeated in a group that features two of the greatest teams in the world: Croatia and Belgium. Morocco drew with the first team and beat the second. Later, the defeated their two Iberian neighbours: Spain and Portugal in the second round and the quarter finals, making it to the semifinals for the first time in the history of African football.
Before they said “goodbye” to the world cup, the Tunisians gathered 4 points after a draw against Denmark (0-0), a defeat to Australia (1-0), and a victory against France (1-0). Even Ghana did not want to go home empty handed. The quarter finalists in 2010 won 3-2 against South Korea, despite their defeats to Portugal (3-2) and Uruguay (2-0).
