The last time Scotland played Morocco was in Saint-Étienne in the summer of 1998, the final group game of that World Cup, and Morocco won 3–0. Scotland packed up and went home. Twenty-eight years later they are finally back at a World Cup — and the draw has placed them in a group with the exact two non-European sides they faced then, Brazil and Morocco. History rarely repeats itself this neatly. The question is whether Scotland can finally write a different ending to the one they got in France.
The market
Scotland come into the tournament off a summer where the scorelines look healthy on the surface — 4–0 over Bolivia and 4–1 over Curaçao in the June warm-ups — but the opposition was modest, and both March friendlies ended in home defeats, 0–1 to Japan and 0–1 to Ivory Coast. That mix is what makes them hard to read. They can score freely when space opens up, but they have struggled against sides that shut the space down. The high point, of course, was the 4–2 win over Denmark that sealed qualification, with Scott McTominay opening the scoring with an overhead kick inside three minutes.
Morocco arrive in a different mood. They are unbeaten in five, with three clean sheets in their last seven, and they sit 11th in the world rankings against Scotland's 36th. They carry silverware too — they were declared 2025 Africa Cup of Nations winners after the final defeat to Senegal was overturned in their favour — and the memory of fourth place in 2022 still lingers. The one uncertainty is on the touchline: Mohamed Ouahbi took over from Walid Regragui only months before the tournament and is leading a senior side at a major finals for the first time, though he did win the Under-20 World Cup with the youth team. Both nations have already played one group game, and how those went will shape just how much rides on this one.
Recent form
The game probably turns on Morocco's right flank. Achraf Hakimi plays almost like a winger when his side has the ball, and if he is allowed to get forward against Scotland's left — Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney patrol that area — the pressure will be constant. Scotland answer with a back three and wing-backs, a system built to keep width under control. But that's where the trap lies: if the defenders stretch too far out to deal with Hakimi, the centre opens up, and that is exactly where Brahim Díaz and Ayoub El Kaabi want to operate. Morocco are quick in transition and they punish space between the lines.
Scotland's weapon is at the other end — set pieces. McTominay and Lawrence Shankland are both threats in the box, and against a side that defends deep and compact, a free-kick or a corner may be the cleanest route to goal. Steve Clarke knows he won't get many open passages against a back line marshalled by Yassine Bounou and Nayef Aguerd. If Scotland can keep Hakimi in front of them and wait for a dead ball, this is winnable. Give him a runway and Morocco set the tempo.
Head-to-head
The pick
The pick is a narrow Morocco win in a low-scoring game. They are tighter at the back, quicker going forward, and they have more ways to unlock a closed defence than Scotland have to bite back — and the market, which makes Morocco a modest favourite and leans under, sees the game the same way: Morocco with the ball, Scotland defending and hunting a set piece.
The risk runs two ways. First, set pieces are precisely the route that can level the gap between sides of this calibre — one corner, one McTominay header, and the Morocco-win call is gone even if the under holds. Second, neither team's opening group result is known at the time of writing, and if one side arrives facing a straight must-win for survival, that can change both the shape and the pulse of the game more than the numbers allow for.
There's no Icelandic thread in this one, but RÚV — Iceland's confirmed World Cup broadcaster — shows it live at 22:00, and for viewers here it's familiar material: a small European nation at its first major tournament in nearly three decades, trying to survive a group with Brazil in it. Icelanders follow stories like this with an instinctive sympathy. They know it from the inside.