FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023: How ultimate underdogs Morocco bolstered their defence after game one devastation – scout report

Morocco’s first-ever Women’s World Cup didn’t get off to the best start, as they suffered a 6-0 thumping against Germany, quickly slapping them with a harsh reality check amid talk of the Women’s National Team emulating the Men’s National Team from the 2022 Men’s World Cup and progressing beyond what was expected of them.

However, we now sit here after game three with Germany knocked out and Morocco progressing to the knockout stages of this tournament, with the Atlas Lionesses earning back-to-back 1-0 wins, firstly over Korea Republic and secondly over Colombia.

The underdogs got the last laugh and now hold the honour of calling themselves the lowest-ranked team, per the FIFA World Rankings, to make it through to the knockout rounds from the groups — something they can be immensely proud of.

The scenes on the pitch after their game, once the Moroccan players discovered they would advance to the next phase of the competition, were very emotional and epitomised what sport, in general, is all about.

So, how did Morocco recover from a devastating opening game defeat in which they shipped six goals to Germany and end up keeping two clean sheets in a row to finish above Die Nationalelf?

This tactical analysis and team-focused scout report will highlight some of the significant defensive issues former Lyon coach Reynald Pedros’ team displayed in their opening game, and how they addressed those problems with their tactics in subsequent games to create a very solid unit off the ball.

Preventing passes into the opponent’s midfield

When setting up in a mid-block, the goal is to deny the opponent easy opportunities to progress the ball into dangerous areas in the middle of the park or the final third. Morocco did a terrible job of denying Germany those opportunities, as the beginning of this section will explore.

Figure 1 shows an example of Morocco’s 4-4-2 mid-block versus Germany’s in-possession shape, which ultimately became a 3-2-5, as the bottom image displays.

At the beginning of this sequence, in the top image, the ball was played from Germany’s central centre-back to the left centre-back, which dragged Morocco’s right centre-forward away from the centre and towards the left-sided German ‘8’, who had dropped to provide a decent short passing option on this side of the pitch.