Morocco Are More Likely to Reach the Quarter-Finals Than Brazil or Spain — and It's Not Hype This Time

Somewhere around 90:05 in Monterrey, this stopped being a nostalgia story. Issa Diop's equaliser — the second-latest World Cup goal Morocco have ever scored — dragged the Netherlands into extra time, and then into the one place Dutch football goes to die: a penalty shootout. Yassine Bounou saved Crysencio Summerville's kick, the Netherlands' fourth, and Ismael Saibari buried the winner. Morocco 3, Netherlands 2 on penalties, after a 1-1 draw at Estadio BBVA in front of 51,243.

The Dutch have now been knocked out on penalties at back-to-back World Cups — and at each of their last three World Cup appearances, since Argentina beat them from the spot in both the 2014 semi-final and the 2022 quarter-final, and they didn't qualify in 2018. Per CBS, it's also the first time ever the Netherlands won't make the round of 16 at a World Cup they qualified for. They had reached at least that stage in all eleven of their previous appearances — nine in a row since 1974 — which makes this their earliest-ever World Cup exit.

Here is the part that should reframe how you read Morocco's next week: our simulation now makes Morocco more likely to reach the quarter-finals than Brazil or Spain. That is not a typo, and it is not romance. It's the bracket. And the same numbers that produce that headline also tell you, honestly, where this run probably stops.

Monterrey wasn't a smash-and-grab

Start with the match itself, because the shootout obscures how one-sided the chances were. Cody Gakpo put the Netherlands ahead in the 72nd minute, but Opta's numbers had Morocco generating 1.4 xG from 11 shots — five big chances — against 0.23 xG from 6 shots for the Netherlands. Bart Verbruggen had to make a point-blank extra-time save from Soufiane Rahimi just to get his side to penalties. The shootout itself was chaos — Neil El Aynaoui hit the crossbar, Justin Kluivert hit the post, Quinten Timber missed wide, even Achraf Hakimi clipped the post — before Bounou and Saibari finished it.

There was a layer of history in it too. Morocco's squad contains three players born in the Netherlands — Sofyan Amrabat, Noussair Mazraoui and Anass Salah-Eddine — the product of a structured Moroccan scouting operation in Dutch football nicknamed the "Afellay Plan", built after the Netherlands had absorbed Moroccan-heritage talents like Ibrahim Afellay, Khalid Boulahrouz and Adam Maher. Morocco didn't just beat the Netherlands; they beat them partly with players Dutch football developed.

The number, and the honest reason for it

Our 50,000-run Monte Carlo simulation (Elo plus Dixon-Coles, refreshed July 3) gives Morocco a 65.3% chance of reaching the quarter-finals. Among every team still alive, only France (90.0%), Argentina (73.3%) and England (68.9%) rate higher. Brazil sit at 61.4%. Spain sit at 59.7%.

The wider bracket is still filling in as the final round-of-32 games are played, but these three ties are already set — Morocco, Brazil and Spain know exactly who they're facing. So for them, those figures are simply each team's probability of winning one match. Morocco get Canada in Houston on Saturday: 65.3% to 34.7%. Brazil get Norway at MetLife on Sunday: 61.4% to 38.6%. Spain get Portugal in Arlington on Monday: 59.7% to 40.4%.

Look at the opponents and the ordering explains itself. Brazil drew Erling Haaland, who tapped in Sander Berge's cross in the 86th minute to beat Ivory Coast 2-1 — his fifth goal of the tournament, one behind Lionel Messi in the Golden Boot race, and Norway's first World Cup knockout win. Spain drew Portugal, a tie with genuine recent needle: Spain lead the all-time head-to-head 17 wins to 6, but Portugal won the most recent meeting, the 2025 Nations League final, on penalties. Portugal just came from behind to beat Croatia 2-1; Spain cruised past Austria 3-0. That's a live fixture, not a mismatch.

Morocco drew Canada. Credit where due — Stephen Eustaquio's stoppage-time winner against South Africa gave the co-hosts their first ever World Cup knockout victory and their first last-16 appearance. But a model doesn't grade on narrative, and it makes Canada the weakest opponent any of the top contenders face this round.

So the claim in the headline is true and it is deliberately unglamorous. Morocco are not rated above Brazil or Spain as a team. They were handed a softer match. That's the whole mechanism.

Where the fairy tale hits its ceiling

The same simulation that flatters Morocco this round is blunt about the rounds after it. Spain's semi-final probability is 42.2% and Brazil's is 30.9% — both clear Morocco's 23.0%. In other words: Morocco are more likely than Brazil or Spain to be in the quarter-finals, and less likely than either to be in the semis. Both things are true at once, and anyone selling you only one half of that is selling something.

That 23.0% still means something, though. It's the highest semi-final probability of any side outside the traditional big six — above Colombia (21.4%), Belgium (18.5%), Norway (15.2%), the USA (14.2%), Mexico (12.5%) and Canada (7.5%). Morocco are, by the numbers, the strongest non-traditional team left in the tournament. And this isn't 2022 residue in the model. Their group-stage evidence this summer was real: a 1-1 draw with Brazil, a 1-0 win over Scotland, a 4-2 win over Haiti — seven points, level with Brazil, second only on goal difference.

But the ceiling is quantified too: 9.1% to reach the final, 3.5% to win it. The second act of the fairy tale — a second consecutive quarter-final, matching the platform of the 2022 run that beat Spain on penalties and then Portugal 1-0 through Youssef En-Nesyri's header — is genuinely likely. The ending almost certainly isn't.

Saturday is the whole thing

Which brings it back to Houston, Saturday, 1pm ET at NRG Stadium. A 65.3% chance means Canada win this match roughly one time in three — and Canada arrive with a stadium-sized crowd behind a host nation that just learned how to win a knockout game at the death. Mohamed Ouahbi's side also just played 120 minutes plus a shootout; the recovery matters.

What Morocco can't afford is to treat the number as a verdict. In 2022 they were the tournament's great overachievers. In 2026 the roles have quietly inverted: for one round, at least, they are the favourite with everything to lose, while Brazil and Spain sweat the genuinely hard ties. If Morocco handle that — the least romantic job in football, beating the team you're supposed to beat — the bracket has already done the rest of the work.

Then the math gets hard again, and we'll find out whether this team is a story about a draw, or something more.