The men’s football competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games kicks off today with the participation of 16 teams from 6 different continents, including 3 Arab teams: Iraq, Egypt and Morocco. The 16 teams are participating in the Olympics as Olympic teams (under 23 years old), and the Moroccan and Iraqi teams are in Group Two alongside the Ukrainian and Argentine teams, the two-time gold medal winners, while the Egyptian team is in Group Three with the Spanish, Uzbek and Dominican teams.
The host team, France, will face the United States team tomorrow at the Marseille stadium in Group 1, which will witness a match between the Guinea and New Zealand teams at the Nice stadium.
In the second group, the Iraqi team will make its sixth appearance in the Olympics, facing its Ukrainian counterpart at the Lyon Stadium, where it hopes to improve on the fourth place achieved in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Within the same group, the Moroccan national team will face a difficult test when it faces its Argentine counterpart, who is seeking the third gold medal in football at the Olympic Games tomorrow.
The Moroccan team is looking forward to breaking the group stage exit jinx when it makes its eighth appearance in the Olympics.
The Moroccan national team is counting on Paris Saint-Germain star Achraf Hakimi, and Sofiane Rahimi, winner of the 2024 AFC Champions League with Al Ain of the UAE.
In turn, the Argentine national team, led by its coach Javier Mascherano, seeks to write glory and obtain a third historic gold medal for his country in the Olympic Games, counting on Manchester City striker Julian Alvarez, the English Premier League champion, and Nicolas Otamendi, the Benfica player.
In the third group, the Egyptian national team will face its Dominican counterpart tomorrow at the Nantes Stadium.
The Brazilian Rogerio Micale, the technical director of the Egyptian national team, hopes to lead the team to achieve the first Olympic medal for Egyptian football, which appears for the thirteenth time in the games, as the best appearance of Egyptian football in the Olympics was when it came in fourth in the 1928 and 1964 versions.
In the same group, the Spanish national team, runner-up in the last edition, will play against its Uzbek counterpart at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris.
The Uzbek national team, which has been coached by its former player Timur Kapadze since 2021, is counting on a number of distinguished players.
For its part, the Spanish national team is confident in its players’ ability to appear strongly, especially after the first team won the European Nations Championship “Euro 2024”.
In Group D, the Asian champions, Japan, will make their 12th appearance in the Olympics and their eighth in a row when they face Paraguay at the Stade de Bordeaux.
