Morocco Outlasted Nigeria In A Battle Of Africa’s Finest

Wednesday's Africa Cup of Nations semifinals were covered head-to-toe in narrative appeal. Senegal-Egypt was the more straightforward of the two, in an increasingly star-dominated landscape: Former Liverpool teammates Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah faced off internationally for the sixth time, and the second time deep in AFCON knockout play (Senegal beat Egypt in the 2022 final, on penalties). On the other side, Nigeria-Morocco had the more immediately intriguing storyline: What happens when the most dominant team of this tournament faces off against the best African team of the past half-decade? The answer, it turned out, was that Morocco, that best African team of the past half-decade, survived a grueling 120-minute stalemate to reach only its third-ever AFCON final, thanks to a 4-2 penalty shootout win.

Entering Wednesday's match, this exact match-up had been the one to circle on the calendar since the start of the knockouts. Nigeria had a roller coaster of a group stage, winning all three matches of its matches with eight goals scored and four against: 2-1 against Tanzania; 3-2 in a wild one against Tunisia, in which Nigeria opened up a 3-0 lead then gave up two late goals to shake the nerves; and 3-1 against Uganda, that time doing a better job seeing out a 3-0 lead. The Super Eagles then steamrolled Mozambique 4-0 in the round of 16, and dispatched Algeria 2-0 in the quarters. Morocco, on the other hand, stumbled in the group stage with a 1-1 draw to Mali, but otherwise took care of Comoros and Zambia by an aggregate 5-0 scoreline. A 1-0 victory over Tanzania led into a 2-0 dispatching of heavyweights Cameroon in the quarters, setting up a semifinal in which neither team had trailed all tournament.