There must be easier ways to attack Fouzi Lekjaa.
Aziz Akhannouch could have gone after PAM’s program. He could have picked apart the promises Lekjaa has been making from one campaign platform to another. He could have challenged the figures, the spending plans or PAM’s record in the outgoing majority.
Instead, Akhannouch went to Mediouna on Thursday and picked a fight with Moroccan football.
Lekjaa was the intended target. Morocco somehow got caught in the crossfire.
“A promise is not saying that we are going to win the Africa Cup of Nations when we are still waiting,” Akhannouch declared.
Except we are not.
CAF’s Appeal Board has ruled that Senegal forfeited the 2025 final and awarded Morocco a 3-0 victory. Senegal has challenged the ruling before the Court of Arbitration for Sport and CAS will have its say.
Until then, the CAF ruling stands.
Dakar does not like it. That is understandable. It is fighting to have the decision overturned.
Why Morocco’s own head of government should choose an election rally to talk as though the ruling does not exist is rather more difficult to understand.
Akhannouch was trying to challenge a Lekjaa promise. What he actually did was cast doubt on a decision Senegal is currently challenging.
Some campaign point.
Not enough trophies, apparently
The Lionesses were next.
“A promise is not announcing three times that we are going to win the Women’s AFCON without it happening.”
No, they have not won it. They have merely reached two AFCON finals and a semi-final and qualified for two World Cups.
That may not satisfy Akhannouch. It should not entirely satisfy Moroccan football either. Teams that regularly reach finals eventually have to win them.
But there is something particularly cheap about taking the defeats of the women’s national team and repackaging them as evidence against a political rival.
The Lionesses were not standing against RNI in Mediouna. Lekjaa was.
That distinction seems to have been lost somewhere on the campaign trail. Then Akhannouch went after the Atlas Lions.
The 2026 team, he complained, had been talked up as capable of going far at the World Cup. The 2022 team had “at least reached the semi-finals."
At least?
Four years ago, Morocco became the first African and Arab country ever to reach a World Cup semi-final. Apparently the achievement has aged so badly that it now merits an “at least."
The 2026 side reached the quarter-finals. In most football countries, that would qualify as a very good World Cup.
In Akhannouch’s Mediouna arithmetic, it became another exhibit in the case against Lekjaa.
Election campaigns have a way of moving the goalposts. This one moved them all the way to the World Cup semi-finals.
Whose stadium?
Akhannouch then accused PAM of claiming credit for the Hassan II Grand Stadium.
“Nobody should go to cities and tell people, ‘We brought you the stadium in Benslimane,’" he said.
The land, he reminded his audience, was chosen by the King. The stadium is being built with state money and taxpayers’ contributions. Nobody can claim it as his own.
Indeed. Nobody can. Not Lekjaa. Not PAM. And, presumably, not RNI.
It would have been a useful principle to leave standing on its own. Instead, the head of government dragged the same national project onto an RNI campaign platform in order to score a point against PAM.
Apparently politicizing the stadium is objectionable only when somebody else does it.
Madrid can talk. Rabat should wait
Then things became more interesting.
“Don’t promise a great final in Morocco when we haven’t even discussed it with our allies, Spain and Portugal,” Akhannouch told Lekjaa.
“A little respect!”
Respect for whom?
Pedro Sánchez has already said Spain should host the 2030 World Cup final.
Rafael Louzán has been saying the same thing, loudly and repeatedly. The Spanish football federation chief even took his campaign for the final to Ceuta.
The Spanish press has joined in with enthusiasm. Madrid, Barcelona, stadium capacities, history, infrastructure, prestige—every argument available has been deployed to make the Spanish case.
Nobody in Spain appears to be waiting for a solemn conclave with Morocco and Portugal before opening his mouth.
Nor has Sánchez been accused at home of disrespecting Morocco by wanting the final for Spain.
He wants it for his country. He says so.
Louzán wants it for his country. He says so.
Lekjaa wants it for his country. “Enough with the election promises,” says Akhannouch.
One rule for Madrid, another for Rabat.
And from the Moroccan head of government, no less.
The ‘big ones’
Then came the line that should trouble more than PAM supporters.
“These are matters for the big ones,” Akhannouch said. “The decision on where the final will be held belongs to the big ones. Everyone should stay in their place.”
Perhaps the head of government could tell us who these “big ones” are.
Spain?
Portugal?
FIFA?
And where, in this hierarchy of the great and the good, does Morocco belong?
Lekjaa is president of the FRMF and the Morocco 2030 Foundation. If the man in charge of the country’s football federation and its 2030 body is not supposed to make Morocco’s case for hosting the final, who exactly should?
There is every reason to challenge Lekjaa for speaking as though Benslimane had already secured the match. It has not. FIFA has not awarded the final.
But Akhannouch did not stop there.
He told Lekjaa to “stay in his place” and leave such matters to “the big ones” at precisely the moment Spain’s political and football establishment is doing everything possible to establish its own claim.
What an extraordinary message to send.
Sánchez does not tell Louzán to pipe down because Morocco might be offended. Spanish politicians do not seem embarrassed when their prime minister campaigns for Madrid. Spanish newspapers certainly do not whisper their preference.
Yet Morocco’s head of government hears a Moroccan official argue for a Moroccan stadium and reaches for the whistle.
All because the official happens to be Fouzi Lekjaa and, inconveniently for Akhannouch, Fouzi Lekjaa also happens to be campaigning for PAM.
There are 12 days of electioneering left. RNI and PAM have plenty to quarrel about.
Akhannouch might want to choose his next target with greater care.
This time he aimed at Lekjaa.
The own goal was his.
