Morocco Did Eliminate Spain and Portugal at the 2022 World Cup — With One Small Asterisk on 'How'

The claim is that Morocco eliminated both Spain and Portugal at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The verdict is substantially true, with one minor precision issue worth naming clearly.

The facts are unambiguous. According to FIFA's official match reports, Morocco faced Spain in the Round of 16 on December 6, 2022, at Education City Stadium. The match ended 0-0 after 120 minutes and Morocco won the penalty shootout 3-0, sending Spain home. Four days later, on December 10, Morocco met Portugal in the quarterfinals. Youssef En-Nesyri headed home in the 42nd minute for the only goal of the game, and Morocco won 1-0. Both results are confirmed independently by BBC Sport and The Guardian, and are recorded in the FIFA 2022 World Cup official bracket. Morocco went on to reach the semifinals, becoming the first African nation in World Cup history to do so.

The steelman version of any skepticism here would focus on the word "eliminated" as applied to Spain. Strictly speaking, Morocco did not score a single open-play goal against Spain in 120 minutes — the match was goalless. A pedant could argue that "eliminated" implies a straightforward defeat. That reading, however, is not how the word is used in football. Elimination means your tournament ends; Spain's tournament ended on December 6 because of Morocco. The penalty shootout is a legitimate and official method of deciding knockout matches under FIFA rules, not a footnote.

It is worth conceding that the two eliminations happened by different means. Portugal was beaten in regulation, 1-0, with a clear match-winning goal. Spain was beaten on penalties after neither side scored in 120 minutes. Both are eliminations in every meaningful sense, but conflating the two into a single narrative of dominant victories slightly flatters the Spain result. Morocco's defense was exceptional against Spain; their attack was not required to be.

The manipulation pattern to watch for here is the reverse of the usual misinformation problem: this claim is largely accurate, and the risk is overcorrection. Fact-checkers who flag "eliminated" as imprecise for the Spain match without acknowledging that the outcome — Spain going home, Morocco advancing — is 100 percent correct would themselves be misleading readers. Precision about method should never obscure accuracy about result.

The broader lesson: when a claim is this well-documented across FIFA's own records, two major sports outlets, and a clear bracket trail, the burden of proof for skepticism is high. Morocco's run was historic, the results were public and verified in real time, and the core claim holds up entirely.