ATLANTA — Haiti had waited fifty-two years to score a World Cup goal. When it came, in the tenth minute at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, it arrived in the most improbable fashion: a Lenny Joseph backheel that deflected off goalkeeper Yassine Bounou and crept into the corner. The crowd of 68,239 registered a gasp and then something close to appreciation. It was not enough.
Soufiane Rahimi settled the matter in the seventy-eighth minute. Morocco had equalised twice, been pegged back again, and spent the better part of the second half watching Haiti refuse to concede quietly. Then a flicked corner found Rahimi near the penalty spot, and he turned on instinct, catching the ball with his right foot as it sat up and finding the net before the Haitian defence could close. Morocco 3-2. The Atlas Lions were through.
The final score was 4-2, Gessime Yassine drilling in his first international goal in the eighty-ninth minute to confirm what had felt inevitable from the moment Rahimi broke the deadlock. Morocco finished second in Group C behind Brazil, who dismantled Scotland simultaneously, and will enter the Round of 32 as one of the more battle-tested sides from the first stage. Who they face depends on matches still to be played in Group F, Sky Sports reported.
For much of the evening, though, the result had seemed anything but settled.
Haiti opened the scoring when Jean-Kévin Duverne crossed into the penalty area and Joseph’s backheel took a freakish deflection off Bounou’s shoulder into the net. The referee initially pointed to Joseph but replays confirmed the touch was the goalkeeper’s. It stood as an own goal, but Haiti celebrated it exactly as they would have celebrated a thirty-yard volley. Fifty-two years between World Cup appearances, fifty-two years since they last put the ball in an opposing net, and now they had done it by accident. They did not care at all. Al Jazeera reported on the historic nature of the moment, Haiti’s only prior World Cup appearance having come in 1974.
Morocco responded with a goal that was rather more deliberate. Achraf Hakimi had spent the opening half probing and pressing, creating opportunities that the Haitian block kept denying. In the thirty-ninth minute, a weak punch from goalkeeper Johny Placide fell directly to Hakimi at the edge of the six-yard box, and he bundled it home. It was Hakimi’s first World Cup goal on his thirteenth appearance in the competition. His twenty-two chances created in this tournament are more than any Moroccan player has produced at a single World Cup, according to ESPN — a statistic that draws a straight line between his attacking ambition and Morocco’s structural reliance on it.
Four minutes later, Haiti broke the spell. Wilson Isidor picked the ball up twenty-five yards from goal, took one touch, and drove it into the top-left corner with a technique that sent it fizzing past Bounou before the goalkeeper could react. Isidor had been muted in Haiti’s opening match against Scotland. Here he was extraordinary. Morocco, shaping as the dominant side, suddenly needed to find something before the half-time whistle locked them into a restart needing to win.
Ismael Saibari gave it to them. His goal in the forty-fourth minute, a composed placement into the far corner from the edge of the area, sent the teams level at two apiece and reminded Morocco that their route through this group still ran through them. Whatever complacency had produced the slippage in the second half of the first forty-five minutes, Saibari’s finish corrected it. The same player had chipped Alisson in Morocco’s opening draw against Brazil for what would prove the group’s most technically audacious goal.
Then came Rahimi’s moment.
Head coach Walid Regragui had introduced Rahimi from the bench with the score level, conserving his substitutions until the moment Haiti looked genuinely stretched rather than simply defending deep. Morocco were pressing higher, Hakimi was finding more space down the right, and Haiti were retreating in phases. When the corner came in and Rahimi turned it home, the Metropolitan Atlanta crowd rose. Morocco had been level or behind for most of the night. Now they had the lead for the first time.
Yassine’s late goal added confirmation. The substitute had barely touched the ball before a low cross from the right found him six yards out, and he struck it first time past Placide for his first in international football. He ran to the corner flag and was swamped by teammates. There will not be many who score at a World Cup as their maiden international goal.
Morocco’s position in the Round of 32 is that of a side that has already taken a result against the best available to it. The opening draw against Brazil was not a group-stage formality. The side that arrives in the knockout stage is harder, more cohesive, and more capable of absorbing pressure than the one that flew into the United States. What they cannot yet know is who tests them next.
For Haiti, the tournament ends with two goals against all logic and three defeats in three matches. They played the first forty-five minutes in Atlanta better than anyone had a right to expect. Fifty-two years is a long time to keep score. They now have two to show for it.
