FIFA World Cup 2022

Moroccans scramble for match tickets

Photo: Atique Anam

On the metro to downtown Doha, three young supporters got up and immediately asked this reporter, on noticing the accreditation card hung around the neck, whether there were tickets they could buy.

When asked where they were from, they replied that they were Moroccans living in Paris. And they have all arrived in Doha on the previous night to watch Morocco take on world champions France in the semifinals. 

It was an unexpected surprise for them to see their team making it thus far in the tournament, a surprise that they certainly were not prepared for.

Down at the exit gate of the metro station in Msheireb, near the centre of the city, two other Morocco fans were rushing to catch a train to the Al Bayt Stadium, where the match was scheduled to take place. Those two – Khalid and Noureddin -- were from the Netherlands, and just like the previous three, they didn't have tickets either.

So what were they doing here? 

"We came here expecting to get tickets and we are going to the stadium now so that maybe we can get a few," Khalid said.

Khalid said he was not that confident that Morocco could beat France, despite the Atlas Lions upsetting Belgium, Spain and Portugal on their way to the semifinals, but he was nevertheless happy to be here to have a chance of watching the match.

"We'll go to the stadium and we're ready to pay maybe double the amount of the FIFA price, but if it's something like five times or 10 times, maybe we'll not."

Since Morocco made it to the quarterfinals by beating Spain, there has been a stream of Moroccans from all over the world descending on Doha. 

The stream only increased when Walid Regragui's troops stunned Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal in the quarterfinals. Now the city of Doha, especially the places where football fans revel and the junctions which connect the stadiums, are full of Moroccan red and green.

The Moroccan Football Federation has given away free tickets to 13,000 fans through the Moroccan embassy in Qatar for the occasion but that number is far too less compared to the demand. 

The Royal Maroc Air, which is the national flag carrier, had announced that it will run 30 special flights from Casablanca to Doha for this particular match. But then it had to backtrack on its decision, limiting the number of special flights, after the Qatari authorities declined to allow too many of them to come without match tickets.

Fans arriving overnight from Casablanca said they expected to receive tickets on arrival based on what they had read on social media and in the Moroccan press. But they said had not been given any.

Still, there were at least more than 50,000 Moroccans buzzing the streets of Doha – coming from Morocco and across Europe – in hope that they would manage a ticket.

Ismail, from Rabat, was one of those moving about restlessly in downtown Doha. After a short chat, he gave this reporter his phone number and pleaded, "Brother, if you get a ticket, please give me a call."

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