ADELAIDE: Morocco’s clash with favourites France in the Women’s World Cup on Tuesday will be a special occasion for their players and coach Reynald Pedros as the tournament debutantes aim to continue their fairytale run by reaching the quarter-finals.

In one of the most unexpected outcomes of an already unpredictable group stage, Morocco reached the knockouts as runners-up to Colombia in Group ‘H’ after beating the South Americans 1-0.

Pedros, 51, is a former France international and said he was looking forward to taking on the country of his birth when the two teams face off in the last 16 in Adelaide.

“It’s not a problem for me to win against France. I will do everything for us to qualify for the quarter-finals.”

Pedros said after the Colombia game that he had the advantage of knowing the France team “perfectly”. Beating France, ranked fifth in the world, would be a remarkable achievement for 72nd-ranked Morocco.

“We have to go up a notch with the game that we have done against Colombia, which was already a very high level for us.” Pedros said “We have to go beyond what we can do and what we can expect, because we would like to qualify for the quarter-finals.”

Meanwhile, Jamaica coach Lorne Donaldson likened their last-16 clash against Colombia to a boxing bout and pledged to be the ones delivering the knockout punch.

“We are going to come up and give it a good shot.” said Donaldson. “Someone will be knocked out, like a boxing match, someone will go down. We’re going to be the one standing when the game is over.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023