defeated Egypt 1-0 the other semifinal earlier<\/a> in Tangier.<\/p>\nMorocco is bidding for its first title since its only success in 1976 and tickets for the decider are likely to command steep prices.<\/p>\n
There were reports before Wednesday\u2019s game that tickets with a face value of 300-500 dirhams ($32-42) for the semifinal were going for as much as 7,000 dirhams ($760) or more on the illegal market.<\/p>\n
It was easy to tell which team was in possession from the deafening chorus of fans\u2019 whistles any time a Nigeria player had the ball.<\/p>\n
Calvin Bassey was the first to receive the home fans\u2019 piercing welcome when he took a walk out alone on the field before the match. He responded with a huge smile.<\/p>\n
Morocco went close with the early chances with Semi Ajayi producing a brilliant block to stop Ismael Saibari. Brahim D\u00edaz whipped a shot past the far post and then tried riling up the already riled crowd.<\/p>\n
Bassey was booked for a tactical foul outside the penalty box, which would have ruled him out of the final with a suspension if the Super Eagles made it. Instead he\u2019ll miss the unpopular third-place decider against Egypt in Casablanca on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Ademola Lookman had Nigeria\u2019s only shot on target \u2014 too close to Bono in the Morocco goal after some fine team play. Ultimately, there was too little of that from the Super Eagles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a team that had scored 14 goals. They had two shots and only hit the target once. That tells you something,\u201d Regragui said. <\/p>\n
His team had 16 shots, five on target, with D\u00edaz, Ayoub El Kaabi and Achraf Hakimi all enjoying good chances. Nigeria held on to get the game to the shootout, where Bono saved from Samuel Chukwueze and Bruno Onyemaechi to set up El-Nesyri for the winner.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP at the Africa Cup: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa-cup-of-nations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RABAT, Morocco (AP) \u2014 Youssef El-Nesyri scored the winning penalty and Yassine \u201cBono\u201d Bounou saved two as Morocco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[173,126,63,146,12069,10297,2967,165,122,724,14878,14608,159,323,264,413],"class_list":{"0":"post-24342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-achraf-hakimi","9":"tag-ademola-lookman","10":"tag-africa","11":"tag-africa-cup-of-nations","12":"tag-bono","13":"tag-calvin-bassey","14":"tag-ismael-saibari","15":"tag-morocco","16":"tag-nigeria","17":"tag-rabat","18":"tag-samuel-chimerenka-chukweze","19":"tag-semi-ajayi","20":"tag-senegal","21":"tag-soccer","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-walid-regragui"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24342","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=24342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}