“I wouldn’t be surprised if Morocco won the World Cup one day.”

Speaking exclusively to FIFA nine months out from the FIFA Futsal World Cup Uzbekistan 2024™, Soufiane El Mesrar is proud to report that statement, uttered by none other than Argentina national team futsal coach Matias Lucuix. The two sides met in a friendly in mid-September, with captain El Mesrar scoring in his side’s thumping 7-0 defeat of the team that finished runners-up at the last World Cup.

The 33-year-old left winger, who “loves playing in every position and moving the ball around”, believes the words of the Albiceleste coach make complete sense. After all, the No10 has seen at first-hand how Moroccan futsal has progressed since the country made its World Cup debut in 2012.The Atlas Lions lost all three of their matches at that tournament, in which they came up against global futsal giants IR Iran and Spain, conceding 15 goals and scoring five. El Mesrar, who was 21 at the time, missed their final game of the competition – a 5-1 defeat to the Spanish – having picked up yellow cards in each of Morocco’s first two matches.

“We weren’t in good shape in 2012, but it was a real experience in Thailand,” recalled this most passionate of futsal fans, whose entire Instagram account is dedicated to the discipline. “We just went there to take part, and we saw how high the level was, with Brazil, Argentina, Iran, Spain and the like. And that was when we decided to get down to work. Our coach [Hicham Dguig] said to us: ‘We need to be playing in the World Cup semi-finals by 2020 or 2024’.”

Since then, the Moroccans have won back-to-back editions of the Futsal Africa Cup of Nations, in 2016 and 2020, qualifying for two more World Cups in the process. Though they again went out in the group phase in the first of those two competitions, they reached the last eight in the second, where they were edged 1-0 by five-time world champions Brazil to fall just short of Dguig’s target.