Statto
Free Kick Specialist
Mostly because they don't tend to do well in a World Cup. They have AFCON more frequently than say the Euros which gives the top teams more opportunity to stack up wins against other countries which are weaker and which skews the rankings. In Europe most of the matches are NL or UEFA qualifiers (for Euros or WCs) and there's fewer friendlies these days in general so there are always anomalies which come out of the rankings because of who teams are playing.
The other thing with Morocco in general is that they won AFCON by a default - they are recorded as winning a match they lost which led to a trophy win. If the onfield result had been reflected in the ranking calculator then they would be lower down. But I suppose at the same time reaching the final they have probably beaten (or beaten teams who have beaten) teams considered more as favourites than them,
Every time there's performances in the group stage which give a false impression. We had the Brazil v Morocco game, and Spain v Cape Verde, and quite a few other examples where a team would be expected to win quite easily but drew or lost. That's just the nature of football. Morocco are not as good as Brazil because they drew with them. A good well-organised "lesser" side will park the bus and make the opposition work for the win, the same way we played under Cooper and Nuno in the PL. The onus is on the better side to break the opposition down and if they don't do that then the lesser team can sneak a good result. Last time Saudi Arabia beat Argentina in the group stage and then Argentina went on to win the tournament.
If we look back at the best African performances at the last four WCs:
2022 - Morocco 3rd place, Senegal 1st knockout phase
2018 - no African side made the knockouts
2014 - Algeria and Nigeria made the knockouts
2010 - Ghana QFs
