{"id":3474,"date":"2026-01-04T19:47:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/3474\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T19:47:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T19:47:36","slug":"morocco-1-0-tanzania-diaz-equals-long-standing-afcon-record-with-decisive-strike-against-taifa-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/3474\/","title":{"rendered":"Morocco 1-0 Tanzania: Diaz equals long-standing AFCON record with decisive strike against Taifa Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Morocco claimed a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Tanzania in the <a href=\"https:\/\/footballtoday.com\/2025\/12\/31\/2025-afcon-round-of-16-full-fixtures-for-ivory-coast-cameroon-senegal-nigeria-morocco-egypt\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:2025 Africa Cup of Nations round of 16 clash;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">2025 Africa Cup of Nations round of 16 clash<\/a> at Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>Tanzania created the game\u2019s first attempt, with Simon Msuva rising high to meet Selemani Abdallah\u2019s cross inside the six-yard box, but failed to hit the target.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Ismael Saibari thought he had given Morocco the lead when he thundered the ball home with a header, but his effort was ruled offside by the VAR.<\/p>\n<p>The Atlas Lions continued to crank up pressure, but Tanzania defended resolutely.<\/p>\n<p>Ayyoub El Kaabi came the closest to breaking the deadlock before halftime with a close-range header, but it narrowly drifted wide.<\/p>\n<p>Morocco upped the ante after the restart as they pushed for the opener.<\/p>\n<p>Saibari and Abde Ezzalzouli called goalkeeper Hussein Masalanga into action five minutes after the start of the second half.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Morocco eventually found the breakthrough in the 64th minute, when Achraf Hakimi picked out Brahim Diaz, who found the back of the net from an acute angle.<\/p>\n<p>Diaz has now become the first player to score in <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/i\/status\/2007867535622910440\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:each of his four AFCON matches;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">each of his four AFCON matches<\/a> since former Mali striker Fantamady Keita did the same in 1972.<\/p>\n<p>The Real Madrid forward\u2019s strike proved to be winning goal, sending Morocco to the quarter-finals, where they will face either Cameroon or South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morocco claimed a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Tanzania in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations round of 16&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2970,173,411,1154,2969,166,143,2968,2967,165,1387,1628,131,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-3474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tanzania","8":"tag-abde-ezzalzouli","9":"tag-achraf-hakimi","10":"tag-afcon","11":"tag-atlas-lions","12":"tag-ayyoub-el-kaabi","13":"tag-brahim-diaz","14":"tag-cameroon","15":"tag-decisive-strike","16":"tag-ismael-saibari","17":"tag-morocco","18":"tag-real-madrid","19":"tag-simon-msuva","20":"tag-south-africa","21":"tag-tanzania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474","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=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}