In the World Cup, the strong teams tend to be the most successful. However, this World Cup was different. Upsets happened, and a lot of teams got eliminated by those who rose as the dark horse. 

 

One of the dark horses was the African team in Group F, Morocco. Morocco needed to face rank #2 Belgium, 2018 runner-up Croatia, and Canada. With all this unluckiness, nobody expected Morocco to qualify for the next round. Nonetheless, Morocco drew with Croatia, and they beat Belgium by 2-0. This was shocking for both teams, and eventually, Morocco went to the next round with the honor of becoming the first place in their group. After that, Morocco beat Spain in the penalty, where their goalkeeper, Yassine Bounou blocked three kicks from Spain. When Morocco advanced to the semifinals, everybody expected them to lose to Portugal of Ronaldo, considered one of the best players of all time. Nevertheless, they proceeded to defeat Portugal and advanced to the semifinals for the first time. Even though they lost to France in the semifinals, Morocco will be remembered as the biggest dark horse in the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

 

 

 

 

Morocco was great, but there was one more team that surprised almost all football fans. It was Japan’s national team. Nobody believed that Japan would end up going to the next round. They were wrong. Japan, when they were losing 1 point to Germany, flipped the game and ended up winning by 2-1. Despite Japan losing to Costa Rica, they defeated Spain by 2-1 thanks to the goals of Ritsu Doan and Ao Tanaka, when they were also losing by 0-1. They ended up going to the next round with their fellow AFC teams: Korea and Australia.

 

 

 

 

There were many upsets in the 2022 Qatar World Cup, and some teams left their footprints at the world cup forever. Most focus on the winners of the World Cup, but people should give respect to the teams that shocked the world as well.