Sunday January 4, 2026<\/p>\n
Prince Moulay Abdellah stadium, Rabat 5pm [7pm EAT]<\/p>\n
Ahead of the round 16 showdown with Tanzania, Morocco head coach Walid Regragui has warned his charges against getting complacent.<\/p>\n
The battle at the Prince Moulay Abdellah stadium in Rabat pits tournament favourites Morocco against knockout debutants Tanzania who are yet to pick a win in the history of the Africa Cup of Nations in 12 attempts.<\/p>\n
However, Regragui doesn\u2019t expect an easy ride against the East African nation that reached the stage<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201dOur players will remain humble, everybody is saying we\u2019re favourites,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThe reason we haven\u2019t won the AFCON over 50 years is overconfidence. We didn\u2019t win because we lacked humility at certain moments. We will respect Tanzania,\u201d he emphasized.<\/p>\n
The gaffer also knows a few players in the Taifa Stars team that can hurt his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have some good players and will probably set up to play on the counter and Simon Msuva and Mbwana Samatta can hurt you in those moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Taifa Stars coach Miguel Gamondi and his captain Samatta, there are no better games to show up than the ones against a very good opponent like Morocco.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are motivated to do well and we want to make the people of Tanzania and East Africa proud,\u201d both asserted admitting it will be their biggest test so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be the biggest test at the tournament but we shall leave everything on the pitch to try and win,\u201d said Samatta.<\/p>\n
Romain Sa\u00efss could be fit to play after missing the last two matches through injury and it remains a mystery on whether Achraf Hakimi will start after he made his first tournament appearance against Zambia.<\/p>\n
Tanzania are short on goalkeepers with both Yacoub Suleimani and Zubairi Foba doubtful.<\/p>\n
Key Stats<\/p>\n
Tanzania\u2019s only win over Morocco came in a 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier, a 3-1 home victory on 24 March 2013 in Dar es Salaam. Thomas Ulimwengu and a brace from Mbwana Samatta secured the win, while Youssef El Arabi scored Morocco\u2019s consolation goal in the 90th minute. Morocco won the return fixture 2-1 at home in June 2013, though neither team qualified for the tournament in Brazil.<\/p>\n
This is the second AFCON meeting between the two nations, following their group-stage encounter at the 2023 edition. Morocco won that match 3-0 and went on to finish as group winners, while Tanzania ended bottom of the group.<\/p>\n
Overall, the sides have met eight times in all competitions. Morocco have won seven of those meetings, including the last five in succession, while Tanzania have recorded one victory. There have been no draws. Morocco have scored in all eight meetings and have kept all five clean sheets recorded in the fixture. Tanzania have failed to score in their last four matches against Morocco.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere on Sunday, giants South Africa and Cameroon face off at Al Medina in Rabat.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday January 4, 2026 Prince Moulay Abdellah stadium, Rabat 5pm [7pm EAT] Ahead of the round 16 showdown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[173,1626,1627,1628,152,413],"class_list":{"0":"post-1477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tanzania","8":"tag-achraf-hakimi","9":"tag-mbwana-samatta","10":"tag-romain-saiss","11":"tag-simon-msuva","12":"tag-tanzania","13":"tag-walid-regragui"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}