Morocco collected Africa’s second win at the 2022 FIFA World Cup after shocking Belgium, while Croatia were too strong for Canada on Sunday evening.
Croatia 4-1 Canada
Croatia came from a goal down to beat Canada 4-1 in a fast-paced Group F clash.
Canada got off to the perfect start when Alphonso Davies scored the fastest goal of the current World Cup, scoring via a header in the second minute, which was his country’s first-ever World Cup goal.
However, Croatia slowly found back into the game and had an Andrej Kramaric goal ruled out for offside after 25 minutes.
11 minutes later, though, Kramaric did score the equaliser after being set up by Ivan Perisic. Things went from bad to worse for Canada when Marko Livaja even made it 2-1 to the European side just before half-time.
Kramaric completed his brace in the 69th minute, when a touch of quality set him up perfectly to slot home from inside the box to break Canadian hearts.
Belgium 1-2 Morocco
Morocco collected their first World Cup win since the 1998 edition after beating Belgium 2-0 at the Al-Thumama Stadium on Sunday.
Belgium looked in control for large parts of the first half, without troubling the Morocco goal too much.
However, it was Morocco who had the ball in the net just before the break when Hakim Ziyech thought he’d scored but the goal was ruled out because one of his teammates was in the view line of Thibaut Courtois.
The second half continued much like the first with neither side completely taking control. Soufiane Boufal had a good chance to open the scoring for Morocco in the 57th minute but his effort went wide.
Second-half substitute Dries Mertens then had a shot saved by Morocco goalkeeper Monir El Kajoui.
However, Morocco finally broke the deadlock in the 73rd minute, with substitute Abdelhamid Sabiri beating Courtois with a direct free kick.
Belgium pressed for an equaliser but were unable to score, while Morocco netted the second in injury time via substitute Zakaria Aboukhlal handing Morocco a famous win over the second-placed team in the FIFA rankings.
The win saw Morocco move to the top of Group F with four points, followed by Belgium with three, while Croatia have one and Canada zero ahead of their clash.
