Frustrated fans whistled the hosts off the pitch after they failed to secure a spot in the knockout stage. Despite their status as heavy favorites, Morocco couldn’t find a winner in a match dominated by two VAR-awarded penalties.<\/p>\n
The Atlas Lions have now extended their unbeaten run to 22 matches, dating back to their Round of 16 exit in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.<\/p>\n
While Morocco controlled the first half, they required a Brahim D\u00edaz<\/a> penalty to break the deadlock before the interval. The spot-kick was awarded after a VAR review judged that Nathan Gassama<\/a> had handled the ball while attempting to regain his balance after being beaten by D\u00edaz.<\/p>\n Thousands of whistling Moroccan fans tried to help referee Abdou Abdel Mefire make up his mind while he consulted replays before he eventually decided in the home team’s favor.<\/p>\n Tempers flared in the second half when Lassine Sinayoko<\/a> was not awarded a penalty after being taken down by Jawad El Yamiq<\/a>. Mefire checked the replays some minutes later and eventually awarded the spot kick.<\/p>\n Sinayoko duly dispatched the penalty to equalize in the 64th.<\/p>\n The home team pushed hard for a winner that would have appeased the local fans, but Mali goalkeeper Djigui Diarra<\/a> proved the difference, denying Youssef En-Nesyri<\/a> and also preventing an own goal from Woyo Coulibaly<\/a>.<\/p>\n France<\/a> star Kylian Mbapp\u00e9<\/a> attended the game, reportedly by invitation of his good friend, Morocco captain Achraf Hakimi<\/a>, who warmed up but didn’t play as he awaits his return from an ankle injury.<\/p>\n Zambia<\/a> drew 1-1 with Comoros<\/a> in the early Group A fixture after both lost their opening games.<\/p>\n Mohamed Salah<\/a> scored again for Egypt<\/a>‘s 10 men in the Pharaohs’ 1-0 win over South Africa<\/a> as his team became the first one to reach the AFCON knockout stage.<\/p>\n Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec 26, 2025, 07:25 PM ET Morocco‘s record-breaking 19-match winning streak came to an end on Friday following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-371295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Mali came from behind to draw with Morocco to delay the host nation’s qualification for the knockout stage.\u00a0Photo by Abu Adem Muhammed\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/p>\n