Tomorrow evening France and Morocco will face each other to establish which of the two national teams will play the final of the World Cup in Qatar, scheduled for Sunday 18 December. It won’t be a game like any other: two countries will face each other which have particularly close ties due to their colonial past. The Moroccan community is the most present in France after the Algerian one, with 840,000 immigrants. Thousands took to the streets to celebrate the team’s unexpected successes against Spain and Portugal, which earned Morocco their first ever qualification for a World Cup semi-final. To prevent unrest in public places, they announced the deployment of 10,000 agents.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin spoke to the National Assembly: “For the match to remain a celebration, a large-scale device will be put in place tomorrow night to guarantee the safety of the fans. 10,000 policemen and gendarmes will be mobilized”. The fear is that there may be tensions after the meeting, which starts at 8 pm tomorrow “particularly around the Champs-Elysées”. Precisely in that area, after Portugal-Morocco, about 20,000 supporters of the North African team took to the streets and were blocked by police in riot gear. There were riots and objects being thrown, some vehicles being set on fire. In the end there were 74 arrests.
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