Behind Morocco's stunning rise in world football lies an unlikely financial engine: phosphate.
OCP's football investment funds training academies with modern infrastructure, advanced technical expertise and a FIFA partnership © Mena Today
Behind Morocco's stunning rise in world football lies an unlikely financial engine: phosphate.
The Atlas Lions' march through the 2026 World Cup, where they face Canada in Houston on Saturday before a quarter-final clash against France on July 9, is backed in part by OCP Group, the world's largest phosphate fertiliser producer, which joined a National Football Training Fund in 2024 alongside the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and private investors.
The logic is straightforward. Morocco sits atop the world's largest phosphate reserves, a finite, irreplaceable mineral that global agriculture depends on.
While China restricts exports, Russia is geopolitically unreliable and US production faces an uncertain future, Morocco has emerged as the stable, reliable supplier of choice.
The Trump administration recently lifted some restrictions on Moroccan phosphate imports to ease shortages created by the Iran war, a sign of just how strategically important Morocco's reserves have become.
OCP's football investment funds training academies with modern infrastructure, advanced technical expertise and a FIFA partnership.
But this is not where Morocco's football ambitions began. Back in 2009, King Mohammed VI directed the government to invest in football infrastructure, pitches, youth academies, stadiums and professional coaching. OCP joined fifteen years later to take the project to another level.
The results speak for themselves. A semi-final at the 2022 World Cup, the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations title, and now another deep run in 2026.
Morocco knocked out Spain and Portugal in Qatar. A potential quarter-final against France on July 9 would be the most charged match of the tournament.
Sometimes a country's greatest natural resource funds its greatest sporting dreams.
By Badr Zayan
Spain has found no evidence to conclude that July's deadly border rush from Morocco into its enclave of Ceuta was orchestrated by Moroccan authorities, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Thursday, countering allegations in a Spanish police report.
Residents of Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta took to the streets on Wednesday to protest the handling by Madrid of a migration crisis caused by a deadly border surge in July when at least 72,000 people crossed from Morocco.
Israel’s foreign minister on Monday accused Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of telling a “brazen lie” after Sánchez said Russian and Israeli-linked networks had spread disinformation around last month’s mass migrant crossing from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
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