Football-mad Morocco dreams of a World Cup final in its own ark

The rendering is dramatic, a vast white stadium inspired by the design of a Maghrebi communal tent, known as a moussem.

The language used to describe it is no less flowery: think of it as “almost like a Noah’s Ark, a place for all nature and animals to come together”, says Tarik Oualalou, head of Paris architecture firm Oualalou + Choi, one of five teams in the design consortium.

Then there is the size. Once finished, the 115,000-capacity Grand Stade Hassan II near Casablanca could be the world’s largest football stadium – and location for the final of the 2030 World Cup Morocco is co-hosting with Spain and Portugal.

But like all grand stadium projects, there are questions over its cost, funding and how it will be built.

It remains unclear if private backing will supplement the funding from state coffers. There is also speculation about the possible involvement of China, which built the main stadium for this year’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast as part of its “palace diplomacy”.

For Morocco, still basking in the euphoria of being the first Arab or African team to be World Cup semi-finalists in 2022, hosting the final of the biggest sporting showpiece boosts its long-held dream of joining football’s greats.

In April 1998, the Atlas Lions were ranked 10th best team in the world. But a poor showing at that summer’s World Cup in France and failure to qualify for subsequent tournaments for years diminished their status.

That forced football-loving King Mohammed VI – who wore the team’s kit to ride in a celebratory motorcade after Qatar 2022 – to sanction the investment of millions of dollars in upgrading sports infrastructure, including a €13m football academy. Five stadiums will be upgraded alongside the $490m for building the Grand Stade Hassan II, part of an estimated $5bn outlay for hosting the World Cup.

Mahfoud Amara, associate professor of sport policy and management at Qatar University said the new arena is Rabat’s effort to match Beijing’s Nest stadium and Doha’s 974 Stadium, made from shipping containers. “Morocco seems to be leveraging this opportunity to assert its leadership in the region for geopolitical purposes and to reinforce its image as a country pursuing modernisation,” he said. “Qatar’s World Cup has influenced other countries [in the Middle East and North Africa], notably Saudi Arabia, to pursue international sports events and invest in cutting-edge facilities. This trend is an integral part of sports diplomacy.”

Authorities in Morocco claim building the stadium in El Mansouria, north of Casablanca, will create thousands of jobs and stimulate the economy, Africa’s sixth largest.

But Qatar set a precedent for concerns about labour conditions in Morocco, a transit point for many undocumented migrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa on their way to Europe, some of whom could work on construction projects.

From 2014 when construction began on Qatar 2022 projects, FIFA and Doha insisted that there had been only three work-related fatalities and 37 non-work-related deaths of migrants. But during the tournament, a high-ranking Qatari official eventually admitted that there had been “between 400 and 500” deaths of migrant workers. In 2021 The Guardian reported that 6,500 migrant workers had died.

Migrant workers could be in a “precarious position” in Morocco, which consistently ranks lower than 120 on the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, said Alex Carlen, human rights coordinator at not-for-profit FairSquare in London.

“The extent to which you will be able to have critical journalists access those sites will be limited,” he said.

Also up for criticism is the disputed sovereignty of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco continues to occupy and administer. The strongest objections so far have come from Algeria, which could boycott the 2030 World Cup as a result, but it remains unclear what other countries will follow suit in voicing discontent.

“The Western Sahara seems to me to be an issue that gets so little attention in the Western press,” said Carlen. “If put on a par with the Israeli occupation of Palestine or Russian invasion into Ukraine, it would highlight it and …invite greater scrutiny.”

“[Even] the Trump administration recognised Morocco’s right to effectively occupy Western Sahara,” he added.

“Sportswashing”, using sporting events to distract from controversies, happens wherever political and sporting agendas intersect.

“However, there seems to be a disproportionate focus . . . when such events are held in non-Western countries,” Amara said.

Carlen agreed: “All countries use international tournaments to improve their reputation. We had the London 2012 Olympics, which people said was a way of restoring Britain’s reputation after the Iraq war. You’ll have the US hosting the next World Cup [amid questions] of their complicity in Gaza.”

“There are risks directly related to the tournament in the case of Morocco,” Carlen added. “[We ought to] look exactly at the harms generated by the tournament rather than the general question of sportswashing.”

There is also the question of legacy. After the tournament, the stadium will be home for two top clubs, Raja Casablanca and Wydad. They now share the 45,000-seat Stade Mohammed V where matches draw only about 14,000 on average.

In Morocco, none of that seems to matter now to the excited citizenry.

“Morocco is a huge football country,” the Moroccan architect Oualalou said. “So there’s a great enthusiasm from the state, the city, all the technical teams. Everybody is very excited about it.”