With a team worth 448 million euros: Morocco conquers the field

This success did not come from nowhere. In 2007, the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, decided to invest in local football. Shortly after, the Mohammed VI Football Academy was established in the country, with the aim of developing international level players. The complex includes training facilities, pitches and residential areas of high standards – and the investment began to pay off even before the World Cup.

Since 2014, local football has gone up a notch: Morocco has incorporated players born outside the country, and even today many of the team’s players were not born there; It sought to adopt European standards; and worked to locate young talents through European scouts.

At the same time, Morocco also began to invest in women’s soccer, in the development of facilities in schools and in the local league. This investment, in the end, also contributed to its winning the hosting of the 2030 World Cup, along with Spain and Portugal.

Over the years, according to the article by Ofir Winter and Ifran Ben Omer from the INSS, football has become an integral part of Morocco’s foreign and domestic policy. A similar process went through other Arab countries, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who saw football as an expression of “soft power” and a way to penetrate the world consciousness in a relatively quiet way.

Morocco’s ambassador to the US previously said that soccer is “a major tool of soft power and international involvement. 90 minutes of football is worth more than two years of diplomacy.”

However, unlike Saudi Arabia for example – which built its image by importing big foreign players to the local league, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, but did not translate this into significant achievements in the World Cup – the investment in Morocco was mainly focused on building local infrastructure.

Morocco has been considered one of the most successful teams in Africa for years, but what happened in the previous World Cup ruined the cards: in one moment, all the ceilings were broken, and it became the first Arab and African team to reach the semi-finals. The achievement proved to the world that the country’s investment in football over the years paid off, and when Morocco qualified for the 2026 World Cup, it was no longer a complete surprise.

14th place in player value

One of the most prominent signs of the Moroccans’ meteoric progress is the value of the players in the team. According to the Transfermar website, the value of the Moroccan squad is about 447.7 million euros – one of the highest in the world. In this, Morocco is ahead of national teams such as the USA, Denmark and Italy. Israel, for comparison, is ranked much lower, with a staff value of approximately 68 million euros.

However, in relation to the really big teams, Morocco is still behind. In first place is France with a staff value of about 1.5 billion euros, followed by England with about 1.3 billion euros, and then Spain with about 1.2 billion euros.

The Netherlands, whom Morocco knocked out in the last game, is ranked higher than them in terms of the value of the squad. Based on these data, it is hard to believe that Morocco will win the cup, but this team has already proven that it is not afraid to look any opponent in the eye – and no one dares to doubt it anymore.

The current World Cup is perhaps just a promo for the next World Cup, which will be hosted by Morocco together with Spain and Portugal. There, with the home push, the sky really will be the limit.