Were Morocco’s National Anthem Lyrics Created for the World Cup?

When Morocco qualified for their first World Cup in 1970, they faced a peculiar kind of problem. Up until then, the Moroccan national anthem was purely instrumental. It was created in 1952 by a French military officer who was then the Chief of Music of the Moroccan Royal Guard, and was chosen as the Kingdom’s official national anthem upon independence four years later. This was all well and good, until football came into the picture.

Before any football match between two nations, there’s a customary scene that we’re all quite familiar with by now: the two sides lined up on the pitch, hands raised to their hearts, singing their anthems before a standing audience. But what happens when a country’s anthem has no lyrics for its players to sing?

Rather than choosing silence, Morocco’s King Hassan II set about finding the words for his Kingdom’s wordless anthem. As the story goes, he launched a national competition open to poets, writers and bards across the Kingdom, and selected the winner himself.That winner was Ali Squalli Houssain, a poet and author from Fez and a professor at Al-Qarawiyyin University. The lyrics he wrote have since been memorized by millions of Moroccans and continue till today as the country’s official anthem, but the history behind the words remains inseparable from the World Cup which spurred it.

Showing up to Mexico with a fresh anthem in 1970, Morocco became the first African country to attain a draw at the World Cup when they tied 1-1 with Bulgaria.