I will be honest, this one was not easy on the eyes. Morocco’s possession hovered between 80-90% throughout the game, and the majority of their passes were in the middle third. Lesotho couldn’t do anything except for defend and sit without the ball, and, to make it worse from a visual experience, the stadium was virtually empty and quiet — mostly because it was played in South Africa as Lesotho do not have a CAF-approved stadium.
Respect to a small contingent of Lesotho fans who did their best to keep
the vibes going.
With that out of the way, we’ll focus on Brahim Diaz’s performance.
Brahim
Brahim was deployed on the right wing of a 4-2-3-1, but he operated mostly in the right half space as the wing was given to right-back Zakaria El Ouahdi who made overloads.
Space was tight, so Brahim sometimes ran out of room to dribble, but he also used his wizardry to get out of some really cramped positions:
Just before half-time, Brahim scored a decisive goal:
That goal was huge. Yes, Morocco may have won anyway, but there was no guarantee of it. Although they controlled everything on the field, they struggled to score, only had five shots on target, and both Ounahi and Saibari missed big changes. It wasn’t until the 82nd minute where Ounahi scored to ice the game after Lesotho opened up their defense a bit.
In his 69 minutes on the field before being replaced by Soufiane Rahimi, Brahim completed 79% of his passes and had one ball recovery to go with his goal. I would not consider this his best game by any means (he made some poor passes in transition and lost possession 18 times), but he was decisive.
With the win Morocco sit top of Group A in African Cup of Nations qualifying.
