By Emmanuel Ebimoh
When the game started at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, all eyes were on Cristiano Ronaldo after his five-star performance against Spain in their first match. Morocco, having lost their opening game to Iran, desperately needed at least a point from the game. All they had to do was to keep Ronaldo away from scoring again, and make sure they convert their own chances. But it wasn’t going to be so. They were going to have a bad day and live to only regret their lost chances of scoring.
It took only 4 minutes into match before Portugal’s danger man, Cristiano Ronaldo scored his fourth goal of the World Cup. However, it wasn’t going to be about Ronaldo’s goal on the day. Morocco were not going to give up without a fight. Despite going behind, the African team gave everything they had and were deeply unfortunate not to have scored in the game.
Nordin Amrabat impressed in attack for Morocco, finding space and distributing passes excellently. It took a superb save from the Portuguese goal keeper, Rui Patricio to stop Morocco’s Younes Belhanda fabulous header from going into the net.
Juventus’s Medhi Benatia also spurned a good chance for his side to pull level but Portugal did enough to hold on for the win, even though everyone in the stadium thought Morocco didn’t deserve to lose.
Sadly for Morocco, they failed to hit the target most times when they found themselves in front of goal. They had a total of 15 shots, four were on target but only two truly tested Portuguese goalkeeper, Patricio.
In the end, the North African side became the second team after Egypt to be eliminated in the first round of the 2018 World Cup, losing 1-0 to Portugal.
After the match, Morocco coach, Herve Renard said: “We qualified for a World Cup after 20 years and we’ve showed that we can play football.”
Once again, Africa will only hope for a better result from the remaining African teams in the competition to salvage some our joy back.
Emmanuel Ebimoh is a Writer, Blogger, and Social Media Strategist. You can contact him on Facebook and LinkedIn at Emmanuel Ebimoh. Email: emmyebimoh@gmail.com
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