Morocco beat Ivory Coast 1-0 to reach the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals and knock out the champions.<\/p>\n
Rachid Alioui scored with a terrific shot from 25 yards to earn the win for Morocco and their coach Herve Renard, who led the Ivorians to the 2015 title.<\/p>\n
Ivory Coast needed a win to go through but gave a listless performance, creating only two chances of note.<\/p>\n
Wilfried Zaha shot weakly from 12 yards, while Salomon Kalou’s header from a tight angle clipped a post.<\/p>\n
The Elephants lacked urgency in their play and go home after appearing not to put up a fight.<\/p>\n
Even after going behind they were unable to cause the organised and disciplined Morocco defence any problems.<\/p>\n
Morocco went into the game knowing that a draw was very likely to be enough for them to qualify from Group C and their game plan from the start was to stay compact and hit on the counter-attack.<\/p>\n
It served to frustrate their opponents, who opted for the long-ball approach on a shocking pitch and failed to find any penetration.<\/p>\n
Morocco could have added a second on the counter-attack but 19-year-old full-back Hamza Mendyl shot into the side netting after running half the length of the pitch.<\/p>\n
They will play the winner of Group D in the last eight on Sunday.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Morocco beat Ivory Coast 1-0 to reach the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals and knock out the champions. Rachid Alioui scored with a terrific shot from 25 yards to earn the win for Morocco and their coach Herve Renard, who led the Ivorians to the 2015 title. Ivory Coast needed a win to go through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n