⚽️ Kick-off time: 12pm local/1pm EDT/6pm BST/3am AEST
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Whatever happens to Canada now – within comedic/catastrophic reason – this World Cup will go down as an unqualified success. So far, they’ve won their first match at a finals; they’ve qualified from a group for the first time; and they’ve won a knockout game at their very first attempt. Nobody’s seriously expecting Jesse Marsch’s team to win the whole darn thing, so the co-hosts will be approaching everything from here on in as a free hit. Any more success will/should be considered an extremely pleasant bonus.
Morocco will be setting their sights a little higher. Four years ago, the Atlas Lions broke through all sorts of barriers: not only was their fourth-place finish their best at a World Cup by some distance, in doing so they became both the first African and Arab nation to reach the semi-final stage. Since then, they’ve won (well, been awarded) the Africa Cup of Nations; in four years time, they’ll co-host the World Cup. It’s a banner period for them, and currently ranked sixth in the world – ahead of historical powerhouses Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, and only behind five previous World Cup champions – they’ll see no reason why they can’t go super-deep again.
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