Bilardo’s premonition about Morocco coming true 20 years later with qualification for the semifinals of the Qatar 2022 World Cup

Carlos Salvador Bilardo’s knowledge and wisdom about the world of football has had many champions. Not only because he was world champion and runner-up with the Argentine national team at the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, but also because his sentences and his opinions of him have materialized many times over time. This Sunday, after Morocco’s historic qualification for the semi-finals of the World Cup in Qatar, a snippet of video quickly went viral.

Through the Twitter account ‘Bilardo Eterno’, a fragment of a program of Saturday busconducted by Nicholas Repetto between 1999 and 2001 (and then 2011), where the Doctor was consulted on who he projected as “the future” of football.

“I think the future is there, I said it in ’75’ when we went to play a Mohamed Cup in Morocco and I said ‘the future of football is here’. It’s not in Europe or South America,” Bilardo said in a program broadcast on July 22, 2000, as he shared a table with Domingo Cavallo, among other personalities.

And justified: “People still play. Here you go through the Federal Capital and do not play. You tour Europe and you don’t play. In Italy, in Rome, Milan or Florence, you don’t play. In Germany, Munich or Cologne, you don’t play. There is no place. And in Africa they play everywhere. They have strong countries like Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco and Tunisia who play and have technique.”.

Morocco made history and made Cristiano cry

The World Cup does not respect noble titles. Neither singles (let’s call them crack) nor family members (read the selections). Long gone days when Germany, Belgium, Uruguay or Spain were deprived of their honours. Closer, Brazil with Neymar. Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal have not saved themselves from the lack of submission that is circulating near the Persian Gulf.

But let’s not blame everything on Qatar 2022. Much of it corresponds to the surprising Morocco, the maximum protagonist of the shots in this World Cup, with a coach (Walid Regragui) who took office three months ago and who achieved a performance out of amazement. Nor is Portugal innocent, but let’s go by parts. Especially in the first half, the Moroccan team gave the Portuguese a lesson in collective play, full of important names who weighed little in the moment of truth.

He didn’t get far on his rivals’ goal, but goalkeeper Diogo Costa gave him an excellent chance before the end of the first half when he missed in a cross and allowed El-Nesyri to head in.

And so Morocco struck another blow, in their best performance in World Cup history, again in front of a raucous majority crowd.