France beats Morocco 2-0 to reach World Cup semifinals

Kylian Mbappé missed a first-half penalty, then scored in the 60th minute and set up Ousmane Dembélé six minutes later as France beat Morocco 2-0 at Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The result sent France into its third straight World Cup semifinal and turned a quarterfinal into a showcase of how immigrant communities are making the 2026 tournament feel like a domestic event across the United States.

The crowd response reflected that split identity. French supporters celebrated a team that was champion in 2018 and runner-up in Qatar in 2022, while Moroccan fans left with pride after another deep run on the world stage. Morocco had already become the first African team to reach a World Cup semifinal in 2022, and this latest meeting carried the weight of that history, as well as the memory of France’s 2-0 semifinal win in Qatar.

Mbappé’s night began in frustration when he failed from the spot, but he recovered to score his eighth goal of the tournament and then slipped the pass that allowed Dembélé to finish. France now moves on to face the winner of Belgium and Spain, with Didier Deschamps’ side still moving through the knockout bracket with the same clinical edge it showed in Qatar.

The match also underscored the long ties between the two countries. Morocco was a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956, and six players on Morocco’s roster were born in France. Those links were visible in Boston, where the atmosphere felt closer to a family gathering than a distant international feud, with supporters connected by language, migration, and mixed households filling the same stands.

That tone mattered because officials in France had urged fans to celebrate responsibly and avoid disorder ahead of the match. In Boston, the setting was calmer and more social than the combustible scenes that can follow France-Morocco meetings in Europe. The mix of French and Moroccan communities in the United States gave the quarterfinal a different texture, one shaped less by street tension than by shared neighborhoods, cross-border family ties, and the growing sense that the World Cup is now part of American civic life.