Brahim Diaz scores the winner as Morocco beat Tanzania 1-0 to reach the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals, extending their unbeaten run to 23 games<\/p>\n
REAL Madrid forward Brahim Diaz scored the only goal as Morocco edged Tanzania 1-0 to reach the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Diaz\u2019s 64th-minute strike maintained his goal-a-game record at the tournament and made him the first Moroccan to score in four consecutive AFCON matches.<\/p>\n
He later dedicated the victory to injured teammate Azzedine Ounahi, whose shirt he held aloft in celebration.<\/p>\n
Morocco will face South Africa or Cameroon in the last eight on Friday.<\/p>\n
The host nation squandered numerous chances before Diaz finally broke the deadlock, set up by Paris Saint-Germain defender Achraf Hakimi.<\/p>\n
Hakimi was making his first start of the tournament after recovering from a serious ankle injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe competition is growing in intensity and we have just faced our toughest opposition so far in Tanzania,\u201d said Diaz.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot everything worked, we know that, but fortunately we managed to secure our qualification.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanzania had the first clear chance in the third minute but Saimon Msuva failed to connect properly with a cross.<\/p>\n
Morocco thought they had taken the lead after 15 minutes through Ismael Saibari, but the effort was ruled out for offside after a VAR review.<\/p>\n
The Atlas Lions dominated possession but were frustrated until Diaz\u2019s clinical finish from Hakimi\u2019s pass.<\/p>\n
Tanzania protested for a penalty in added time after a push in the area, but the referee waved play on.<\/p>\n
Argentina-born Tanzania coach Miguel Gamondi praised his team\u2019s performance despite the defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so proud of what my team produced,\u201d said Gamondi.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey showed that the gap between Morocco and us is not as big as people think.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victory extends Morocco\u2019s unbeaten run in all matches to 23 games.<\/p>\n
Their last defeat was to South Africa at the 2024 AFCON.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brahim Diaz scores the winner as Morocco beat Tanzania 1-0 to reach the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[411,166,165,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-3932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tanzania","8":"tag-afcon","9":"tag-brahim-diaz","10":"tag-morocco","11":"tag-tanzania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932","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=3932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}