By

Eniola Olatunji reporting 

The Atlas Lions of Morocco, Africa on Monday morning drubbed six times world champions, Blue Skies of Argentina 2-0 at Santiago, Chile for her first U20 world men’s football title and the second country after Ghana to so win the honors.

Magic boy, Yasir Zabiri produced a scintillating brace scoring at the 12th and 29th minutes before a crowd of 43,253 fans under the watch of Italian Ref Maurizo Mariani to stop the dream of Argentina lifting the trophy for a record 7th time.  

Zabiri joined Naiser Villareal of Colombia, Lucas Michal of France and Benjamin Cremaschi of USA to be top scorers with 5 goals each. 

Othmane Maami of Morocco was crowned by FIFA as the BEST Player of the tournament winning the Golden trophy; Santino Berbi of Argentina carted home the Golden Gloves for the BEST Goalkeeper of the tournament while USA won the Fair Play trophy.

A total 149 goals were scored in 52 games with 585,059 fans or 11,251 fans per match in attendance.  

Both teams met only once at the COTIF tournament match played on 25th July 2016 which Argentina won 3-0. 

Argentina that ousted Nigeria had three clean slates in the tournament, only country to have survived without conceding a goal in three matches as she beat Boxing country, Cuba 3-1; tamed the Kangaroo nation of Australia 4-1; and piped Italy 1-0 at the group games before applying the ‘koboko’ whip on Nigeria in a 4-0 drubbing at the Round of 16 games and at the quarterfinal lashed Mexico 2-0. The team drove into the finals beating Colombia by a lone goal in the semis.

The Atlas Lions humbled world football power, Spain to signal they are a formidable force from Africa in 2-0 win; beat  another super power nation, the Samba Boys of Brazil 2-1 and surprisingly lost to Mexico 0-1 at the group stages before locking down High Tech Red Devils of South Korea 2-1 in the Round of 16 games. She then floored the Yankees of USA 3-1 in the quarterfinal. Something to note is that both teams had two clean states (not conceding a single goal) in two matches. Morocco qualified for the final through the gap of the skin of the tooth outscoring France 5-4 on penalties after 1-1 at full time.

Brazil had the record of 20 appearances at the U20 age group games but the biggest win was Norway 12 Honduras 0 of 30th May 2019 where now Manchester United of England Goals Talisman, Erling Haaland scored 9 goals in a single match.

Defending Champions, Uruguay did not qualify as the country finished 5th in the South American U20qualifier thus becoming the 8th title holders to fail to defend their title.

For the first time, the 25th edition of the world U20 Men’s competition will be hosted by two countries in 2027. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan will host 22 other countries from 6 confederations. Azerbaijan had hosted the world U17 female football before and would be debutantes at the U20 Men’s football tournament. Uzbekistan had reached the quarterfinal of the U20 tournaments in 2013 and 2015.

FIFA will fix the dates for the 2027 competitions in Chile and the draws will be made later after conclusion of the qualifiers.