Fearless

Morocco team players were not afraid to lose - and therefore won

The goalkeeper of the Moroccans Buna was absolutely calm. It was strange that the calm of the goalkeeper, who played 120 minutes of a painful match, in which his only mistake in the game on the line could lead to disaster; But there was no excitement in him, and before the penalty series, he smiled, as a person whose infinitely good mood helps him in all the circumstances of life. Great goalkeeper and amazing human confidence was in him. Even one of the penalties taken by the goalkeeper causes delight, and the Buna all three times chose the right corner where to jump, beat off twice, and the time when the ball got into the bar, was ready to recapture too.

It was a triumph of a person who is not part of the elite of world football and not playing in the top clubs, where the goalkeepers will vime. There are only a few of them. Courtois, Neuer, Alisson, Ter Stegen, the Cloud ... - That's the whole elite, the entire closed exclusive club of supervoters. The tall Moroccan never even stood on his doorstep and never once in his life knocked on this door; His whole goalkeeper life took place in the backyard, where he wandered between the third Spanish league and segunda, until he climbed into La Liga and got up against Seville. A good labor goalkeeper, but that evening in Doha, inspiration descended on him and his team.

Hakim, who beat the last penalty of the Moroccans - a penalty, which decided everything - was calm and did not find signs of a depressive, suppressing concentration, which we saw on the face of an experienced, all the Buskeys in football. For Buskitts, it was a torture to beat the penalty, and for the hacking - the enjoyment of a fighter, confident in his technique and in his iron nerves. A person in which the fire of rage is burning would have struck with the heart and with all his might, from the run he would slap the ball into the gate so that the mesh shot up.

Hakim found the strength to joke at that moment: he struck the center, cutting the ball with a “Swede”, while the huge figure of Unai Simon flew into a corner in all the yellow and did not find the ball there.

At that moment, a heavy gentleman with a mustache burst out laughing in Prague, in a jacket of the old Bohemias club, Antonin Panenka, who came up with this method of putting goalkeepers for a laughing stock. Pan Antonin, your business lives and wins!

The Spaniards in this game for departure were burdened and burdened with their reputation, their glory, their greatness. The eighteen -year -old Gavi did not just play football, he dragged the glory of Spain on himself, and how heavy this glory was. It is so heavy that it crushed Gavi, and Olmo, and Morata, and Buskats, who got bogged down in the reloading and could not knock out at least a spark of fire from their continuous friction. And the Moroccans were not burdened and were not afraid of anything, the wind blew in their backs, and the unthinkable success - the victory over Spain and the exit of 1/4 - attracted them, lit them and made them fearless. They played in their field, the Doha on this day became a Moroccan city, red-green flags everywhere, Emir Katara distributed tickets to the Moroccans for free for this match, and they beat the drums, put on lion's manes and growled menacingly, and when the Spaniards moved to prolonged attacks and a long possession of the ball, they flew from all sides. A shame, Spain, play so fresh and boring, come forward, Morocco, the country of desert, blue tiles and lions!

But the support of the stands, the lion's growl of thousands of sip and a piercing whistle would be not enough for victory. For victory you need a plan! And the plan was, formulated by coach Walid Readrar and scheduled for points, what to do to each player on the field. Regrary solved one problem: what to oppose the Spanish ownership of the ball? He was not the first to solve this complex and almost philosophical problem. The confident Holland in the final of the 2010 World Cup contrasted the Spanish movement of the ball of the players, the movement is so continuous and strong that it created the Spaniards, broke their logic and connection, overpowered their control.

Smart Regrari realized that his team was not capable of such a feat, an attempt to suppress the Spanish game will exhaust the Moroccans.

Therefore, the football sage proclaimed: "Measure!" - Let them, let them own their 77% of the time with the ball, let them graze thirty times in a row, let them pull their tires right and left, and we will roll back and score all the holes in our defense. And they scored, not only holes, but even the slightest moves and burrows, even the pores seized - they all filled with the sand of their protection, everything was hungry with their stiffness, their perseverance, their hard work and their faith that the plan given to them by the coach will work.

And because of the walls they built, because of the coastal ramparts and shallows-lovushki in the support zone, they flew into their attacks and counterattacks, like the famous Moroccan pirates on numerous light ships, which once brought horror and fear of solid European navigation.

These counterattacks frightened the Spaniards and at the same time relieved tension and pressure from Moroccan protection, allowed her to sigh and recover.

Such was the plan, and it was carried out strictly, with the meaningful discipline and courage of people who believe in their business.

No wonder they pumped after the game of two: Buna, goalkeeper, and reggradi, coach.

It was an ideal plan not only in a purely football sense, but also in the human. He relied on the best quality of Moroccan players - patience.

The team captain Romain Saiss at twenty -one could end his career, because he had no contract at all and was not interesting to anyone except his dad, who let him play football from a family cafe, where a healthy and good -natured guy washed the dishes. But - patience, patience! Sabiria climbed from poverty and from the life of a migrant through the fifth German league, and the son of a cleaning lady Khakim from childhood knew that the future of his family depends on how he would study the game at the Academy of Real. The Spaniard Rodry said after the game that the Moroccans did not show anything and did not surprise anything. Of course, they were moved by annoyance and terrible resentment, and in some ways he was right: they really did not try to overwhelm the butt with a whip, did not try to take the ball from the Spaniards and deprive them of their beloved possession, but they showed something important, great and great, and this is bold patience and cold-blooded knowledge that was sitting in the subcortex of each of them, in each of their maneuverages, in each pass, in each pasy, in each pass. A jerk, tackle and in each insurance.

We live in the world's events: a thousand events per day, a million per day, news feeds of thousands of sites run like abnormal ones - and all these events are lying into our mind and clogging, so we lose the ability to see the story in its slow course. And she flows. The year of the liberation of Africa from colonialism is the year 1960, when the seventeen African states were born, but the liberation is not a point, but the process, it is looking for a channel and expands to new territories and spheres. This liberation expressed itself, including in football, in Africa’s dream to stand up with Europe, in a passionate desire to finally defeat the former metropolis. How long this process has been going on, and how this passionate desire does not run out, and how many attempts had to make African teams since the Cameroon with Roger Mill at the 1990 World Championship defeated Argentina with Maradona, went to the quarterfinals, arranged a zaruba with England and stopped on the threshold of the semifinals, lost at an additional time ... A lot of attempts! And now the first of the African teams will try to reach the semi -finals of the Morocco team ...

But next to this is another process - globalization. The red-green national team, whose coach of Ragrai speaks of pride and happiness to be a Moroccan and play for the people of Morocco, consists of sincere patriots who do not live in Morocco. Readi himself was born in France and there he spent his whole career of the player. They are inhabitants of the world who absorbed the world and cosmopolitan football culture. And not only football. The goalkeeper Buna, who, smiling, went to the goal for execution - for a penalty for the goalkeeper is always like shooting - was born in Canada and played in Spain, Zakaria Abukhlyal was born in the Netherlands, where he played for PSV and for all the junior and youth team of the Netherlands, before he decided to play for a historical homeland; Saiss was born, lived and played in France, and he grew up in Madrid and never lived and did not play Morocco, he was a member of that highly paid and prestigious group of players who wander around Europe - Spain, Germany, France - in search of the best contract and a happy fate and absorb all the achievements and methods of modern football. Zeesh was also born in the Netherlands and also played for all the youth and youth team of this country, as well as for Herenven, that is, he went through an excellent school of attacking Dutch football, which he reinforced with his English experience; He could play for a country in which he grew up, whose tongue and customs know, but decided to play for the country of his ancestors, for Maghreb, for the yellow desert and growling lions, for the orange fortress towers and for the stairs of the old stone, leading to the expanse of the ocean flooded by the non -sprayed light.