Ghizlane Chebbak: A player born into Moroccan soccer greatness but writing her own story

New York Times

26-07-2025

A sea of red emerged beneath a white cloud. A deafening din filled the air. Thunderclaps of noise punctuated the swelling overtures, accompanied by flashes of red light.
This was not some biblical storm, but the Prince Moulay Abdellah stadium in Rabat, as 45,000 Moroccans — many armed with flares and smoke bombs — encircled the pristine green of its pitch. It was a colosseum, and there was only one gladiator that they had come to see.
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As the Atlas Lionesses took to the field against South Africa in the 2022 Women's Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) final, the roar of support reached a crescendo as the crowd started chanting, 'Cheb-bak! Cheb-bak! Cheb-bak!'
Morocco captain Ghizlane Chebbak helped capture the hearts of a nation during their run to that final, and despite losing 2-1 in that match, she finished WAFCON 2022 as both its joint-top scorer (three goals) and having been voted player of the tournament.
She went from relatively unknown to hard to ignore. Her story is intertwined with that of women's football in the country.
Morocco qualified for their first WAFCON since 2000 when the country was chosen to host Africa's premier competition three years ago. But their rise has been exponential. They have gone from complete obscurity to reaching consecutive WAFCON finals — with a World Cup knockout-phase appearance in between.
Chebbak, meanwhile, was born to footballing greatness. Her father, Larbi, also played for Morocco and was part of the 1976 side that won the North African nation's sole AFCON title to date.
His success in football led him to the counter-cultural belief that Ghizlane should play it, too. He was her biggest fan.
'She inherited all the technique from him and is the only one among her brothers who plays (professional) football,' Abdellah Hidamou, who was Chebbak's coach for six years earlier in her career, tells The Athletic.
Like many Moroccans, Chebbak honed that technique on the streets of Casablanca, its biggest city, and like many of the players at WAFCON 2025, she started out playing at a boys' club. At the age of 13, she was competing in senior women's football and made her Morocco debut at 17.
After a brief stint in Egypt — cut short by the Arab Spring, a series of pro-democracy uprisings across that region — Chebbak returned home in 2012 and signed for the ASFAR club in Rabat, just four years after a national women's league was launched in Morocco.
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'What I always remember about Chebbak is how she stood out when she joined us,' says Bahia El Yahmidi, head of women's football at ASFAR and the woman who brought Chebbak to the club. 'Even though there were older players on the team, Chebbak was the one who quickly showed real seriousness and commitment.
'Chebbak is the leader of the group. The star, both on and off the pitch.'
To say Chebbak dominated the Moroccan league would be an understatement. In the 12 years she was at ASFAR, she won 10 titles, was the league's player of the season three times and finished as its top scorer on six occasions, including one where she racked up 54 goals… in just 20 appearances.
In 2020, at the behest of King Mohamed VI, the monarch of Morocco, the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FMRF) transformed its approach to women's football. The plan saw the FMRF's budget for it jump from less than $1million to $65m overnight.
That support has propelled Morocco from the fringes of African women's football to its heart — at both club and international levels. The culmination of that investment was to bring the continental tournament to the country.
The opening game of that 2022 WAFCON on home soil was an emotional occasion for Chebbak.
Morocco beat Burkina Faso 1-0 via a goal she scored, but her joy was mingled with sorrow. Dad Larbi, her greatest supporter and inspiration, was not there to see it. He had passed away in 2020, aged 73. He got to see his daughter become a professional footballer, but not her transformation into a superstar.
'I always think about my father and his advice, because he was always my first supporter,' Chebbak told the Confederation of African Football (CAF) after that tournament three years ago. 'On the day of the opening match, I experienced things that I had never experienced before: a stadium full of fans and football lovers. Most people knew my father. So I did my best to pay tribute to him and to make my country proud. I am living a dream.'
She did just that, earning her team a phone call from King Mohamed VI after their loss in the final.
'It was a bliss to listen to the king's voice on the phone with him congratulating us,' says El Yahmidi, who was with the players when they received that call. 'It's really something that every Moroccan would like to experience, listening, from the king's mouth, to the word 'Congratulations'.
'It was an honour for everyone. It was something inexplicable. It was magical!'
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A stroll down virtually any city across the country after that tournament featured Chebbak's image as she became the face of one of Morocco's telecom companies, alongside men's internationals Achraf Hakimi and Hakim Ziyech. In a country where, before 2022, the majority of the population wouldn't have even known they had a women's team, that type of exposure for a player was previously unimaginable.
Chebbak followed that WAFCON by leading Morocco to their first Women's World Cup the following year. After the pain of an opening 6-0 defeat against Germany, they recovered to beat South Korea and Colombia, becoming the first Arab or North African nation to reach the knockout phase of that tournament.
Last year, Chebbak signed for Levante Badalona in Spain's top-flight Liga F, making her the first Moroccan to move from a domestic club to a European one.
'She was always the first to initiate donation drives for team staff; drivers, cooks and the kit manager. People who don't have high incomes or financial bonuses,' remembers Hidamou. 'She wasn't just a leader on the field, but off it too.'
Now the 34-year-old Chebbak is back on home soil, leading her country to another continental final while playing her best football. She has already surpassed her three goals from the last tournament, scoring four times.
Morocco, host nation again, face a tough test back at the Moulay Abdellah tonight (Saturday) against nine-time African champions Nigeria, but they aren't completely infallible. One of the teams Chebbak scored against — a penalty in a semi-final shootout — to reach the same stage in 2022 was… Nigeria.
They are now driven by thoughts of revenge and a desire to bring home a record-extending tenth title – dubbed Mission X.
Though her father isn't around to see it, Chebbak could carry on his legacy by winning a first WAFCON for the nation tonight, in the process making theirs the first inter-generational family to lift the men's and women's Africa Cup of Nations.