"In 1975, we went to play a tournament in Morocco and I said, 'This is where the future of football is. It's not in Europe, it's not in South America.'" Carlos Bilardo said that on Argentine television in the early 2000s. Nobody paid much attention. They should have.
Footage of the 1986 World Cup-winning manager's prediction resurfaced following Morocco's Under-20 World Cup victory in October 2025, and the timing couldn't be sharper. The senior Atlas Lions head into the 2026 World Cup as one of the most dangerous teams in the draw — placed in Group C alongside Brazil, Scotland and Haiti — and with a form record that most European heavyweights would envy.
The numbers behind the unbeaten run
Morocco have lost just three matches in the three-and-a-half years since their 2022 Qatar semifinal run. The last defeat came in August 2025 at the African Nations Championship — a tournament restricted to domestic-based players, so the relevance is debatable at best. Their full senior squad is technically on a 28-game unbeaten run, a sequence that includes the deeply controversial Africa Cup of Nations final against Senegal, which Morocco lost after extra time but were later awarded after Senegal's players walked off the pitch in protest at a refereeing call before eventually returning to complete the match.
Whether you count that as a win or not, the trajectory is undeniable. This is a team that reached a World Cup semifinal as supposed underdogs, then didn't collapse back into mediocrity the way many African nations have historically done. They kept building.
Why Bilardo believed Africa would lead football's future
Bilardo's reasoning wasn't mystical — it was almost anthropological. After touring Italy and Germany in 1975 and finding empty streets, he arrived in Africa and saw something different: kids playing football everywhere, on every available surface.
"In Africa, they play everywhere," he said. "So Africa has strong countries, like Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia, because people go out and play football there. And that's good, because it means they have technical ability."
It's the same argument coaches and analysts have made about Brazil and Argentina for decades — street football producing technical players that no academy system can fully replicate. Bilardo saw it in North Africa half a century ago.
Now Morocco are grouped with Brazil in a World Cup being hosted across the United States, Mexico and Canada, and they arrive not as romantic overachievers but as genuine contenders. Argentina, France and Spain can't say they weren't warned. Bilardo, now 88, certainly isn't surprised.
