Morocco’s Mohammed VI Football Academy, a factory for champions (RFI)

The outstanding performance of the Moroccan footal team in Qatar 2022 world cup is still reverbating across the globe. In this connection, Radio France Internationale (RFI) aired Monday a reporting on Morocco’s Mohammed VI Football Academy that it labeled a factory for champions.

With its 18 hectares of ultra-modern infrastructure, five soccer fields, a medical center and more than 100 accommodation places, the Mohammed VI Football Academy is a factory for football champions, RFI said Monday.

Created in 2009 at the initiative of King Mohammed VI, the academy had one goal: to boost Moroccan training, said RFI, noting that behind the performance of the national soccer team at the World Cup Qatar 2022, the academy Mohammed VI harbors a “genuine sports project” and a “nursery” of Moroccan soccer.

The King “had this idea that training was a priority, that it had to be started”, said the former national technical director, Nasser Larguet, first director of the academy.

“And so, there were objectives that were very specific, that is to train high-level players to supply the professional clubs in Morocco and for the best, go to Europe and also supply the various national teams: the under 17s, the under 20s and the Olympics”, Larguet was quoted by RFI as saying.

Thirteen years later, it is with four players from the academy that the Atlas Lions have shone in Qatar. A success that sheds light on a work in the shadows, but according to Abdellatif Belmadi, coach of the under 15, this is only the beginning, stressed the French radio.