Morocco U20

Rabat hosts the federation that runs Moroccan football, and its northern edge, in the pine forest of Maâmora, holds the Mohammed VI Football Academy.

That happened in 2025, when Morocco beat Argentina 2-0 in the final of the FIFA U-20 World Cup — the country's first world title at any level of the game, and only the second an African side had taken.

Some of those squads left more than a trophy behind. Tarik Sektioui, part of the 1997 winning side, went on to more than a hundred caps for the senior team and played at two World Cups, while Nabil El Zhar, capped for the under-20s in the mid-2000s before spells at Sevilla and Getafe, later captained the full national side.

Locally the side is known as the Atlas Cubs, a smaller echo of the senior team's Atlas Lions, and its sharpest fixtures come against Algeria and Tunisia.

When the calendar allows it, those games are played in Rabat at the Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium, a ground built to hold 69,500.