By Jackie Spinner
When Morocco reached the semifinals of the World Cup in 2022, much of the Western media framed the run as a miracle.
Morocco became the “Cinderella story,” the “giant killer,” the improbable outsider disrupting soccer’s traditional powers. Across much of the coverage, surprise became the dominant frame before audiences were given much context about Morocco’s soccer infrastructure, diaspora talent or long-term investment.
The achievement was historic — and personal for my three Moroccan-born sons. Morocco became the first African and Arab nation to reach a World Cup semifinal that year.
But the coverage also revealed something deeper about how Western sports media often approach countries outside Europe and South America. Success is frequently framed as surprise rather than infrastructure, investment or history.
That narrative matters as the 2026 World Cup arrives in the United States in a few weeks, where American audiences will encounter the diaspora communities and identities that surround international soccer.
The challenge for journalists will be resisting the temptation to reduce those audiences to spectacle and symbolism. Much of the coverage in 2022 treated Morocco as a surprise, but that success did not emerge suddenly.
Morocco has one of the longest soccer histories on the African continent. The national team won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1976. In 1986, Morocco became the first African and Arab nation to advance past the group stage of a World Cup, topping a group that included England, Poland and Portugal before losing narrowly to West Germany in the Round of 16.
The country has significantly expanded soccer infrastructure in the past two decades. The Mohammed VI soccer Academy, established near Rabat in 2009, became part of a broader national strategy focused on elite youth development, federation support and strengthening ties with players in the diaspora.
That diaspora connection became one of the defining stories of Morocco’s 2022 World Cup run and will likely remain central to other teams in 2026.
Many members of Morocco’s national team were born or raised outside Morocco. Hakimi grew up in Spain. Hakim Ziyech and Sofyan Amrabat were raised in the Netherlands. Yet each chose to represent Morocco internationally.
International coverage frequently positioned those choices through questions of identity and belonging: What does it mean to represent a country your parents or grandparents left? How do athletes navigate multiple languages, cultures and expectations at once?
Those are not only sports questions. They are questions about migration, diaspora identity and media representation.
The matches themselves became only part of the story. The coverage surrounding Morocco’s run revealed how global sports media still relies on familiar narratives when countries outside traditional soccer powers succeed.
Coverage often emphasized emotion, symbolism and improbability. That symbolism intensified because the tournament took place in Qatar, the first Arab nation to host a World Cup.
Morocco wasn’t just a soccer team. It represented Africa, the Arab world and Muslim communities globally.
None of those themes was inherently wrong. Morocco’s run carried enormous symbolic meaning across multiple regions and communities.
But the narrative often reduced Morocco to an exception or emotional phenomenon rather than recognizing the country as a soccer nation with decades of history, infrastructure and club culture.
Western sports media has historically approached many non-European soccer powers through the language of surprise and symbolism. Similar narratives emerged around Senegal in 2002, South Korea in 2002 and Croatia in 2018.
Sports coverage often appears culturally neutral, but international tournaments shape how audiences understand countries, migration and identity far beyond the pitch.
At the same time, modern soccer audiences no longer consume coverage through a single national lens.
Fans increasingly experience international tournaments through overlapping media ecosystems: television broadcasts, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp groups and multilingual social media feeds.
During the 2022 World Cup, Moroccan celebrations spread rapidly across TikTok and Instagram, where videos from Casablanca, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Chicago circulated almost instantly. Algorithms amplified emotional scenes: crowds waving flags, mothers celebrating, fans crying after victories, players embracing their mothers on the field.
Those moments helped humanize Moroccan supporters to global audiences. But algorithmic amplification also tends to reward emotionally recognizable narratives, reinforcing the same familiar storytelling structures traditional media often relies upon: the underdog, the miracle run, the emotional fan base carrying the hopes of millions.
For local journalists covering the World Cup in American cities, including in Seattle, Atlanta, Houston and Kansas City, the challenge will be resisting the temptation to flatten those audiences into familiar stereotypes.
The easiest coverage will focus on colorful crowds, emotional celebrations and viral moments. But the more meaningful reporting will come from understanding the communities behind those scenes: diaspora audiences navigating multiple identities, families consuming matches across several languages and supporters whose relationship to soccer long predates the tournament’s arrival in the United States.
Those stories will not just happen inside the stadiums. They will happen in the Fan Zones and Fan Festivals, where people who cannot afford the most expensive World Cup in history will be gathered to watch.
The complexity underneath those moments, migration histories, player development systems, regional identities, linguistic diversity and decades of investment, is often harder to compress into viral clips or headline-friendly narratives.
That is part of what makes diaspora soccer culture so powerful. International tournaments become public negotiations of identity, especially for audiences navigating multiple homes, languages and national affiliations at once.
Next month, I’m taking my middle son to Atlanta to watch Morocco play Haiti in a World Cup game, and he will get to see his heroes on the pitch. We will go to the Fan Festival in downtown Atlanta where I hope he will feel the same sense of belonging that he does in Morocco.
He will not just be watching a World Cup match. He will be watching himself become visible.
That is why the coverage matters.
Because for diaspora audiences in our local communities especially, international soccer coverage is never only about sports. It becomes part of how people understand where they belong, how they are seen and which stories the world chooses to tell about them.
Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from a talk Jackie Spinner gave on May 15 at the “Mediatization of football in Morocco” international conference at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra.
