Stade Marocain

Stade Ahmed Achhoud seats just 5,000, and the ground carries the name not of a benefactor or a street but of a player — Ahmed Achhoud, the most decorated man to wear the Stade Marocain shirt.

The club was founded on 5 May 1919, under the French protectorate, by an army commandant, Pierre Cabos.

Its best years followed quickly. The club won the Moroccan championship in 1928, 1931 and 1944, and finished runners-up in 1964. It also took the Coupe du Trône in 1951, and after three lost finals in the 1930s, finally won the Gil Super Cup in 1944.

Mohamed Benjelloun Touimi won two of those championships in the Stade Marocain shirt, then went on to found Wydad AC and become its first president — a rival institution built by a man who started out here. Abdallah Ben Barek came through the club in the 1955–56 season before leaving for Málaga in Spain, where he became a star.

Moroccan independence reshuffled the game, and Stade Marocain never got back the ground it lost to Wydad and Raja Casablanca. The club now plays in Botola 2, the second tier, and finished ninth in the 2024–25 season. Its sharpest fixtures are still local ones, against Rabat's other old clubs, AS FAR and FUS Rabat, matches the city's press has long called derbies.

Football was never the whole of what Cabos set up. Stade Marocain still runs sections in rugby, basketball, handball and athletics, much as it did from the beginning.