Morocco will have the backing of an entire continent when they attempt to become Africa\u2019s first World Cup semi-finalists by beating Portugal on Saturday, said coach Walid Regragui.
\nThe North Africans will take on Portugal at Al Thumama Stadium as the first Arab nation to reach the last eight after beating Spain on penalties in the last 16.
\nA World Cup semi-final against either England or France is up for grabs, alongside a place in the history books.
\nCameroon in 1990, Senegal\u2019s 2002 side and the 2010 Ghana team all fell at the quarter-final stage.
\n\u201cWe have nothing to lose. The challenge is to do as well as we did in the previous games,\u201d Regragui said on the eve of the match against Portugal.
\n\u201cWe want to show that Africa deserves to be here, Morocco deserves to be here.
\n\u201cWe have a whole people behind us, a continent behind us and the Arab world behind us. That\u2019s a lot of energy behind us. We\u2019re going to try and do everything we can.
\n\u201cWe can do it, we can make history again. It (the support) can push us, help us actually to play with this pressure, not to make any mistakes.\u201d
\nMorocco have the best defensive record in the tournament, having conceded only one goal in their four matches.
\nBut Regragui warned: \u201cWe can\u2019t rest on our laurels. We haven\u2019t got carried away, we\u2019ve just surprised a few people and a few algorithms who expected Belgium or Spain to be in the quarter-finals.\u201d
\nRonaldo factorCristiano Ronaldo was a surprise omission from Portugal\u2019s starting XI for their match against Switzerland in the last 16, with his replacement, Goncalo Ramos, scoring a hat-trick in a 6-1 win.
\nBut Regragui would prefer to see the Portuguese teamsheet without the name of international men\u2019s football\u2019s greatest goalscorer.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re going to be fresh,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if Ronaldo\u2019s going to play, but I hope he doesn\u2019t. I know he\u2019s one of the best players in history so I don\u2019t want him to play.\u201d
\nMorocco\u2019s success in Qatar has sparked celebrations back home, but also in several European countries where the Moroccan diaspora live.
\nFourteen of Regragui\u2019s 26-man squad were born outside the African country.
\n\u201cPeople are identifying with us and we\u2019ve managed to unite Moroccans behind this football team,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that\u2019s worth more than anything, it\u2019s worth more than money, it\u2019s worth more than titles.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve made people happy, we\u2019ve made people proud but that\u2019s not the only reason we\u2019re here \u2014 we\u2019re here to win matches and go as far as we can in this tournament.\u201d
\nMorocco have had a series of injury concerns, with full-backs Achraf Hakimi and Noussair Mazraoui playing despite not being fully fit.
\nCentre-back Nayef Aguerd hobbled off injured in the Spain match but could be ready to play on Saturday.
\n\u201cLots of injuries, people sick. We\u2019ve played lots of games without people 100 per cent,\u201d said Regragui.
\n\u201cI\u2019m proud of that because nobody has seen Morocco at 100pc power. Aguerd is waiting tomorrow to see if he can play or not. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Morocco will have the backing of an entire continent when they attempt to become Africa\u2019s first World Cup semi-finalists by beating Portugal on Saturday, said…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3486,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}