Hours before the “fiery” confrontation, the coaches of Morocco and Algeria...

On Saturday, the Qatari capital will witness a fiery confrontation between the two poles of Maghreb football, the Moroccan team and its Algerian counterpart, as the two teams will play, at Al Thumama Stadium in Doha, a fateful match, drawing the quarter-finals of the 2021 Arab Cup in Qatar.

Looking at the statements of the Desert Warriors coach, Majid Bougherra, and the coach of the Atlas Lions, Houssein Amoutia, each team takes its opponent seriously, given the results achieved by each of them in the group stage.

Amota said during the match press conference that the confrontation against Algeria will be strong, as it bears the African crown, and that five of the players are among the pillars of the first team.

Most of the teams participate in this tournament, with local players, while the first teams are waiting for decisive matches in the World Cup qualifiers, which applies to Morocco and Algeria.

Amota said that his team will go to the match without pressure, especially since the players took a rest, after qualifying among the first, but at the same time, he pointed out that the pressure is increasing with the successive stages of the tournament.

As a reminder, Morocco is the holder of the Arab title. It is looking to keep the Arab crown on the occasion of this session.

For his part, the Algerian coach, Majid Bougherra, considered in a press conference held on Friday that the meeting that will bring his team together with the Moroccan national team is a “local derby meeting” and said that “the best will win the meeting.”

Morocco had started strongly, winning by two clean points over Palestine and Jordan, while it overtook Saudi Arabia with a clean goal to qualify at the top of its third group with the full score.

For its part, Algeria qualified again from Group D, with a fair play difference from Egypt, after a draw on points (7) and goal difference (7), as Algeria beat Sudan 4-0, and Lebanon 2-0, before drawing with Egypt 1-1.

In his reserve squad, Amota relies on several strengths, most notably Abdelilah Al-Hafidhi, who grabbed the spotlight in the group stage, and who will face a strong confrontation with the captain of the Algerian national team, Yassine Brahimi.

Many observers say that the winner of this match will inevitably be in the final, and perhaps a champion of the Arab Cup, as the two teams showed their fangs from the beginning and established themselves as strong candidates for the title.

About 24 hours before the match, the phrase “Khawa Khawa” (Towards Brothers) swept across social media, to overcome offensive posts from the two teams’ supporters.

Algerian and Moroccan fans are looking forward to watching an enthusiastic football match in the light of sportsmanship and fair competition, according to Ojdham.

Prior to the quarter-final summit, the “Atlas Lions” had previously met with the “Desert Warriors” in 2019 in the qualifiers for the African Championship for local players. At that time, they tied 0-0 in the first leg, before the Moroccan settled matters in his favour, by three clean goals in the second leg.

History of confrontations between the two teams:

Morocco excels in its last confrontations with Algeria, starting with the 1986 African Nations Cup in Egypt, which ended in a draw, and in 1988 with the victory of the Atlas Lions with a 1-0 win.

They also faced each other in the second round of the African Nations Cup in Tunisia 2004, where Morocco won 3-1, before Morocco renewed its victory with a clean four in the year 2012 during the qualifiers for the same tournament, after it had lost 1-0 in the first leg.