Morocco dreaming of glory on home turf at Afcon 2025 and World Cup 2030

In the mind’s eye, the road map ahead has clarified fast. It can look dazzling, viewed from Morocco.

February 2025: The Atlas Lions triumph at the Africa Cup of Nations in front of 70,000 fans, perhaps more, in Rabat or Tangier and a rollercoaster that began two winters earlier, by reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup in Qatar, continues to soar.

June 2030: The legend grows. Before 90,000 fans in Casablanca, Morocco knock Brazil out of the World Cup.

If those scenarios have an element of random fantasy, the stage at least is now set. Wednesday’s announcement, hardly trailered at all by Fifa, that the hosting of the World Cup in seven years' time had been won by a joint bid submitted by Morocco, Spain and Portugal follows close on the heels of last week’s Confederation of African Football decision to stage the 2025 Afcon in Morocco.

Morocco-Spain-Portugal had been favourite for 2030, its proposals considered more robust than a submission from South America to share the tournament across four nations: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile. Discreetly, Fifa had been talking to both rivals about a possible compromise ahead of the scheduled announcement of the successful bid early next year. Agreement was reached ahead of deadline.

The compromise is that one game each from the opening round of matches will be played in Montevideo, Uruguay, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in Asuncion, Paraguay, before the tournament as a whole settles on North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.

It’s a novel idea, and environmental campaigners have criticised it as a bad idea. By the time the draw for the event, assigning qualified teams to groups and fixtures, is made in 2029, there will be various groups of supporters complaining about