Morocco has the opportunity to strengthen confidence before the start of the second round of the World Cup journey.
The Moroccan national team concludes its journey in the group stage of the 2026 World Cup, hosted by the United States along with Mexico and Canada, with a match against its Haitian counterpart in the third round.
The Moroccan team enters the match buoyed by a valuable victory against Scotland, which secured its qualification for the knockout stages. The "Atlas Lions" are hopeful of achieving a second consecutive win, thus maintaining their chances of topping the group and finishing the first round with a morale boost.
On the other hand, the Haitian team, despite being mathematically eliminated from the competition, aims to achieve its first historical points in the World Cup. They will try to deliver a strong performance against the Moroccan team to avoid repeating the scenario of their participation in the 1974 World Cup, where they accumulated three defeats and exited with a score of zero points.
Experts believe that while the match against Haiti may seem easy on the surface for the Moroccan team, the "Lions" must respect their opponent sufficiently to achieve a positive result that serves as motivation for Achraf Hakimi's teammates before the knockout matches.
In this regard, sports journalist Saida Alawi stated that given the vast differences between the two teams, the Moroccan team should comfortably secure the match, warning that "smaller" teams tend to rise to the occasion in such events. She noted that the Haitian team will strive in their final match in the World Cup to leave with dignity and will seek to win against the Moroccan team.
Alawi explained in a statement to Hespress that all teams facing the Moroccan national team now take them very seriously, noting that the "Atlas Lions" are no longer that surprising small team but have become a leading team on the global stage following their achievement in the 2022 Qatar World Cup.