Guillem Balagué views Morocco as 2026 World Cup contenders

Football journalist and author Guillem Balagué reviews the entertaining 1-1 draw between Brazil and Morocco at the MetLife.

Anyone who watched the first half, saw something worth remembering: a World Cup contender. Not Brazil. Morocco.

A 1-1 draw tells you almost nothing about a football match. What happened over those 90 minutes told you almost everything about where these two World Cup projects stand right now: one searching for its identity around a single player, the other several years into a plan that keeps producing exactly the kind of team capable of, say it loudly, anything.

The two versions of Brazil

Start with Brazil, because right now there are two versions of this team. One is built entirely around Vinícius Júnior, and on his 50th cap, this performance explained why. With no out-and-out goalscorer alongside him as Igor Thiago feels like an alien presence in the forward line, disconnected from the rest, everything funnels through Vini’s feet.

And he delivered, he has no intention of shrinking from that pressure: cutting in from the left, curling one into the side netting off a clever Bruno Guimarães pass. 10 goals in fifty caps tells you he hasn’t always been this decisive, but he is now, he has to be, because for the first time this genuinely feels like his team.

Then there’s the other Brazil. The one that walked into a stadium that felt like somebody else’s home game — yellow everywhere, noise from the first whistle designed to remind them who was supposed to be in control — and for twenty minutes looked like a team feeling that weight.

When Morocco scored, Gabriel’s body position was wrong in a way that spoke to nerves as much as anything tactical, and the reaction of the Brazilian players was close to panic — despite the failures in the last two decades, for Brazil there is only two possibilities in a World Cup, winning or disaster.

Carlo Ancelotti’s answer told its own story: Fabinho on for Casemiro at half time, and suddenly Brazil were winning the 50-50s, moving the ball with urgency, forcing the issue. The team corrected the course but it does not offer great securities — they come from losing six out of 18 qualifiers.

The influence of Neymar

And then there’s Neymar — not on the pitch, but central to the plot. His inclusion, injured and with conditions attached (less social media, no captaincy, a place on the bench), was the only call Ancelotti could realistically make. Leave him out and every flat performance becomes a referendum on his absence; include him and the whole dynamic changes.

There’s no real debate in Brazil about whether he keeps playing until he chooses to stop. If he recovers from injury expect one moment of Neymar magic in this tournament. Even so, this team, possibly the least talented in recent memory, is a five-time champion that, on this evidence, may not have quite enough.

Morocco impress in tournament opener

Morocco is where this needs to widen out, because nothing about this performance was a one-off. It’s the latest entry in a run that stretches back to that semi-final in Qatar — twenty-seven games unbeaten since, with the only defeat coming against Kenya last August, under Mohamed Ouahbi, promoted specifically because his Under-20 World Cup-winning side played attacking football, not just because it won.

You could see that identity here. For the first twenty minutes, with the entire stadium set up to intimidate them, Morocco still controlled it — organised, aggressive, but perhaps impressed that the other team was wearing the iconic Brazilian shirt.

Then Saibari scored, off a gorgeous Brahim Díaz through-ball, and something released. You could almost see the realisation travel through Morocco’s side: this is only a team, and up close, they don’t look that good.

For the rest of the half, Morocco were the better side by a distance, and even after Brazil regained control in the second half, it was Morocco who came closest to winning it — Alisson needed a stoppage-time double save to stop them.

Behind all of this is a generation that chose Morocco. Achraf Hakimi, raised in Getafe to working-class Moroccan immigrant parents and now a Champions League winner with PSG, calls this side “the Brazil of Africa” and talks openly about winning the whole thing.

Ayyoub Bouaddi shines on world stage

Eighteen-year-old Ayyoub Bouaddi, who switched from France to Morocco only last month, produced a genuinely world-class display on his World Cup debut — good enough that Arsenal, PSG and Manchester United are reportedly in a €70m race for him.

No one tells that story better than Brahim Díaz. His assist for Saibari was the moment that turned this game — the kind of pass that splits a defence, finished with the low, toe-poked touch of someone who learned to survive in tight spaces in futsal long before he played 11-a-side.

He was Morocco’s best player for an hour. His background is this Morocco national side’s story in miniature: a mother from Málaga, a father born in Melilla into a Moroccan family, childhood trips to Nador to see his grandmother.

“I have always felt 100% Spanish and 100% Moroccan,” he’s said and Morocco’s federation worked on him for years before he finally chose them, even after Spain had him on a preliminary World Cup list.

There’s something personal driving him too: he missed the penalty that could have won Morocco the Africa Cup of Nations on home soil after being built up as the face of that tournament. That disappointment hasn’t gone anywhere and for him it’s fuel.

Brazil must improve

So a draw, on paper. In reality, two very different stories leaving New Jersey. Brazil now know the gap between their best version and their worst is still far too wide, and that closing it may come down to how much one player can offer, with a wounded superstar in reserve. It does not feel sufficient.

Morocco, again, showed they’re no longer a team that competes, but in fact one built to win, capable of ruining absolutely anyone’s tournament.

Check out the latest World Cup odds on site.