AFCON 2021: How Egypt knocked out Morocco thanks to a balanced tactical performance – tactical analysis

Egypt were successful in beating Morocco during their encounter for the AFCON 2021 quarter-finals following a long match that was decided during extra-time. The 2-1 final score does not really reflect the number of concrete goalscoring opportunities that came especially for Egypt. Moreover, it was a match in which the limits of Morocco were discovered even though this team had the abilities and the potential to reach a more advanced round.

Despite being deprived of some of their starting players especially in defence, with Mohammed El Shenawy and Hamdi Fathi being injured, Egypt were still able to stop most of Morocco’s attacking threats to secure their win. And at the same time, Mohamed Salah and Trézéguet were crucial in scoring the two goals to keep their team in the competition for another week and prepare for the semi-finals against Cameroon.

In this tactical analysis article, the focus will mainly be centred on Egypt’s solid defensive performance and how they alleviated Morocco’s attacks while analysing both teams’ attacking tactics at the same time.

Line-ups

Egypt started the match according to the 4-3-3 formation with Mohamed Abou Gabal as a goalkeeper, Omar Kamal, former Serie A and EPL’s Ahmed Hegazi, Mohamed Abdelmonem and Ahmed Fattoh in defence, Amr El Solia, Arsenal’s Mohamed Elneny and Ayman Ashraf in midfield with both Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and Omar Marmoush playing on the wings to support the team’s striker, Mostafa Mohamed.

On the other side, Morocco preferred to start using the 4-1-4-1 formation with Sevilla’s Yassine Bounou as a goalkeeper, a defence composed of Achraf Hakimi, Romain Saïss, Nayef Aguerd and Adam Masina. Fiorentina’s Sofyan Amrabat played just in front of defence with Munir El Haddadi, Aymen Barkok, Selim Amallah and Sofiane Boufal forming a midfield line behind Youssef En-Nesyri, the team’s striker.

Egypt’s attacking performance

The Egyptians suffered from a bad scenario as soon as the match started since they conceded a goal at the 5^th minute following a penalty that was awarded to Morocco due to a wrong tackle made by Ayman Ashraf on Hakimi. Soon after, Egypt started to show what they are capable of in attack by shooting on goal numerous times and threatening Bounou with some powerful and well-oriented shots. Egypt tried shooting 14 times in this match with only five shots on target. Yet, some of these shots were extremely dangerous and if not for Bounou’s excellent saves, Morocco could have conceded more than two goals in this match given that they left too much space for shooting in the final third.

As you can see in the following example, the space left between the defensive line and the midfield line was huge and Egyptian players were able to create a lot of danger using that space, especially when knowing that some of the passes and the movements were executed on purpose in order to free that part of the pitch and allow Egyptian midfielders to get the ball on that part of the pitch.