Elated Morocco fans celebrated on the streets of London on Tuesday night following their team’s triumph over Spain in the last 16 of the World Cup.
Footage showed crowds of people around Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus and Edgware Road chanting, dancing and waving Moroccan flags after the result.
Morocco won 3-0 on penalties after the final whistle went without either side managing to score a goal.
Piccadilly 📍🇲🇦 pic.twitter.com/9qeW0eYG1d
— Nnamdi Onyeagwara (@nnamdionye) December 6, 2022
It is the first time Morocco, or any Arab nation, has reached the last eight of the World Cup finals. They are also the first African team to reach the quarter-finals since Ghana in 2010, with only Cameroon and Senegal having done so previously.
It is the third successive major tournament – following the 2018 World Cup and the 2021 Euros – in which Spain, the 2010 World Cup champion, have been knocked out on penalties.
Describing the scenes on Edgware Road, Jahmell-Hasan Rhys Campbell, a 21-year-old student from London, said: “It was incredible. There were lots of flags everywhere. Not just Moroccan flags but flags of almost every African nation.
“The cars were beeping every second, people were dancing in the street and hanging out of their car windows. It was such a surreal experience. [There were] easily around 300 people.”
Lucie Bickerdike, 37, who watched the celebrations from the top deck of a passing bus, said everyone seemed “in very high spirits”.
“I don’t follow football closely so at first I wasn’t sure what was happening,” she said. “There were lots of car horns blaring all down the street, chanting, dancing, flares, and fireworks. At one point, a group boarded the bus singing and dancing, and then left again.”
Celebrations were also seen in cities across Spain, which has about 800,000 Moroccan residents.
In Barcelona, Youssef Lotfi, a 39-year-old construction worker who was born in Morocco but moved to Spain as a child, said he loves both countries, but “today is a day of joy for Moroccans and all the Arab world”.
“Morocco is representing all the Arab world, all the African continent. That is beyond description, it is the most glorious part,” he told the Associated Press.
In a statement, the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, sent his “heartfelt congratulations” to the players, who he said “gave their all and blazed a trail throughout this great sporting event”.
“[The team represents the] hopes and dreams of Moroccans in Morocco, Qatar, and all over the world,” he said.
