Morocco Knock Out Netherlands on Penalties in Monterrey

Monterrey — "There's no reason we can't go all the way to the quarter-finals or the semis," Soufiane, a Morocco supporter, told BabaGol just minutes after the dramatic penalty shootout victory over the Netherlands on Sunday evening.

Monterrey — the city that sits in the shadow of the famous Cerro de la Silla mountain — hosted the last-16 tie between Morocco and the Netherlands in what was an extreme football occasion, carrying almost the intensity of a derby.

In the days leading up to the match, fans from both camps flooded into the city. The Moroccans arrived in impressive numbers, while the Dutch painted the city centre and fan zone bright orange the day before kick-off. The local Mexican public was also fully engaged — many of them backing Morocco, in no small part to avenge the Netherlands' elimination of Mexico in the last 16 of the 2014 World Cup: a match settled by a controversial penalty awarded for a foul on Arjen Robben, in a game Mexico had largely dominated. That moment is inscribed in Mexican football memory with one defiant phrase: no era penal — "it wasn't a penalty." Fascinatingly, that game had taken place exactly twelve years earlier, on 29 June 2014. Nobody in Monterrey that evening could have known how profoundly those words would echo inside the stadium by the time the night was done.

This was not the first World Cup meeting between these two sides. At USA '94, Dennis Bergkamp inspired a 2-1 Dutch victory. But a great deal has changed since then. The balance of power looks very different today.

Morocco have invested enormous resources in developing football across the country — through the Mohammed VI Royal Football Academy, and through an aggressive and systematic pursuit of talented players from Moroccan communities established across Europe. The Moroccan diaspora, which arrived largely in the 1960s and 70s as a workforce that helped rebuild postwar Europe, has become a breeding ground for elite football talent. Several players in this Morocco squad have Dutch roots. Noussair Mazraoui, Sofyan Amrabat and Anas Salaheddin were all born in the Netherlands and developed through Dutch football. And then there is Ismael Saibari — born in Spain but shaped by Dutch football — who was PSV Eindhoven's standout performer last season and who, after a tournament that began with an explosive hat-trick of goal contributions, has reportedly agreed a move to Bayern Munich once the competition is over.

The match itself was largely Moroccan in its control. Only in the opening minutes and at the start of the second half did the Netherlands show any real attacking spark. Periodically, the Mexican crowd broke into chants of "no era penal", with the Moroccan supporters quickly joining in.

But then, against the run of play, the deadlock was finally broken — and from the orange side. In the 72nd minute, Cody Gakpo — who not long ago suffered the devastating loss of an unborn child with his partner — connected with a ball that broke to him in the box and fired the Netherlands ahead. His teammates, including those on the bench, all surrounded him in a deeply emotional scene.

For a moment, it seemed as though Morocco might unravel, unable to overcome the history and complexity of their relationship with this Dutch side.

But in the 91st minute came a dramatic Moroccan equaliser. A superb long ball from Chamseddine Talbi dropped perfectly for Issa Diop — half-Moroccan, half-Senegalese, a player who had previously represented France at youth level — who rose to head Morocco level. The Estadio BBVA shook. 1-1, and extra time.

In many respects, justice had been served. Morocco had simply been the better team.

Extra time was largely Moroccan in character too. In the 113th minute, Gakpo suffered an injury and was substituted. As he took his time leaving the field, Mazraoui — who has been outstanding throughout this tournament — approached him to hurry things along. The two exchanged words in Dutch, a telling reminder of how blurred the lines of identity can be in modern football.

The match went to penalties, and what followed was a shootout unlike most — tense, nervy, and deeply dramatic.

Martens de Roon missed. Then Justin Klaassen. It seemed the Netherlands were on their way home.

The shootout had actually begun with a miss from Morocco's Nayef Aguerd, and the Dutch had reason to believe. But soon enough, they began to miss too — carving out that familiar hole they so often dig for themselves when it comes to penalty shootouts at major tournaments.

After two misses apiece — including from Achraf Hakimi for Morocco and Klaassen for the Netherlands — Saibari stepped up. He sent his penalty straight into the net, and that was the signal for enormous celebrations among the Moroccan and Mexican supporters both inside and outside the stadium. "No era penal!" bellowed the crowd — now repurposed into a gleeful paraphrase: "there were no penalties," because the Netherlands never truly mastered the art of taking them. Many shouted those words with tears in their eyes.

The Dutch, for their part, looked poor throughout. They never functioned as a collective and were nullified by Morocco's young, disciplined defensive structure. With the exception of Wout Weghorst, who came off the bench and battled and pressed, very few Dutch players made a meaningful impact on the match. It ended with misses from Quincy Promes and Hakimi.

The 2026 World Cup is a wild, surprising, endlessly dramatic tournament — full of late goals, shocking upsets and heavyweight exits as early as the last 16. And in that spirit, Morocco — on a night when their key players, Brahim Díaz chief among them, were below their best — sent yet another signal to the rest of the field: we are here to go further than a semi-final. Further than we have ever been before.

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