WORLD CUP 2022
Which World Cup team has conceded fewest goals and can Morocco beat all-time record?
As the first African side to reach the semi-final, where they will play France, the Atlas Lions are hoping to keep to their strengths.
What a 2022 World Cup the Morocco team is having. The players and coaching team have already secured a place in the history books as becoming the first African nation to reach the final four and, as well as dreams of a place in FIFA’s showpiece final, they can also look to match another all-time record.
Morocco World Cup defence stays strong
Coming into their semi-final against the strongly fancied France, Walid Regragui’s team have conceded just a single goal. That’s across all three group games, the round of 16 match and that of the history-making quarter-final.
Making that even more remarkable is that the only goal that U2-pun-friendly Yassine Bounou (often simply known as ‘Bono’) has allowed to sneak over his own goal line was from his own player, namely Naif Aguerd, against Canada in the group game 3 win. So, neither those north Americans, nor fellow semi-finalists Croatia, nor any of the fancied European sides of Belgium, Spain or Portugal could score against Morocco. Crazy, right?
Will that defence hold out against Kylian Mbappé, Oliver Giroud, Antoine Griezmann and co? If they do, how will they compare to other miserly teams of the past that have reached the World Cup final? Let’s have a look...
Least goals conceded for World Cup finalists
As you can see from the graphic (h/t sofascore), Morocco would need to prevent their net from bulging in their final two games to match the record of Italy in 2006, Germany in 2002, the Netherlands in 1974 and England in 1966.
While that would be a nice accolade to point to, I’m pretty certain that if you offered the Atlas Lions a 15-14 aggregate victory over the next two games they’d bite your hand off.