Moroccan Ambassador: Soccer Match a Bridge to Closer Business Ties With Atlanta, U.S. 

As Morocco gears up to play its third World Cup group stage match in Atlanta, the country’s ambassador to the United States sees soccer as a useful “tool” to deepen the countries’ longstanding partnership. 

Ambassador Youssef Amrani spent Monday morning visiting Mercedes-Benz Stadium, including checking on the growth of the grass playing surface, but he argued in an interview that what happens off the pitch will carry longer-lasting effects.

Morocco will be hosting activations focusing on its tourism charms, building on a Delta Air Lines flight to Marrakech last year, as well as its potential in complementary industries to Georgia, from automotive to aerospace and agriculture.

The 250th anniversary of American independence this July 4, he said, occasions a reminder that Morocco was the first nation to recognize the fledgling U.S. after it declared independence.

Now, the countries have a 30-year-old free-trade agreement, vital in a time of global uncertainty on tariffs, as well as ongoing military collaboration, the ambassador said. 

“Morocco is open country, and we want to build upon this relationship,” Mr. Amrani told Global Atlanta in an interview at Atlanta City Hall, just before meeting with Mayor Andre Dickens. “Football is a tool that brings people together.”

He would know after a 48-year career in diplomacy that has included two ambassadorial stints in Latin America covering 11 countries, as well as serving as the top envoy to South Africa.

The ambassador’s short visit comes two months after Mr. Dickens visited Morocco with representatives of the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta, or ADAMA. The trip included stops at the 1-54 African diaspora art fair in Marrakech as well as the U.S. mission in Rabat, the capital. 

More than 20,000 Moroccans traveled to Qatar for the World Cup in 2022, and Mr. Amrani doesn’t see recent visa issues as hindering them from coming to North America for this year’s joint three-country tournament. The U.S. pause on immigrant visa processing on 75 countries including Morocco does not preclude the issuance of tourist visas. Besides, the ambassador added, Morocco has a sizable diaspora in the United States and Canada. 

“You will have a lot of Moroccans coming here, and wherever I go, people are happy to receive them and to greet them here and to enjoy, because at the end of the day, football is a game.” 

Atlantans, he said, should capitalize on the opportunity to get better acquainted with Morocco, which presents a beachhead on the African continent that is also lies just 40 kilometers from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. 

“Africa is the future, and we are telling our American friends that there should be more priority with Africa, not only for stability in the Sahel, or for security, but also for possibilities, for investment.” Atlanta, as a melting pot and a “gateway to Africa” in its own right should slot right into that opportunity, he said. 

Morocco will also join Spain and Portugal in hosting the next World Cup in 2030, a sign, the ambassador says, of their “shared values” and a growing recognition of the need to link Europe to Africa. 

Striving for unity is one of Morocco’s defining features in the international arena, the ambassador said, noting that the country has acceded to the Abraham Accords and was the first country to sign up for President Trump’s Board of Peace, ostensibly for Gaza, an unproven body with little explicit focus on human rights, which some see as undermining the United Nations and other multilateral institutions.

“We are a country who believes in peace, and we will engage and commit to work with all our allies — and you are our allies in the U.S. — to build up this space of prosperity and stability, especially in this difficult world,” Mr. Amrani said.

Such collaboration is natural for the U.S. and Morocco, whose kings helped the U.S. gain naval access to the Mediterranean in its earliest days as a republic. 

Where some see the Atlantic, a vast blue expanse, as a divider, Mr. Amrani says Morocco sees a bridge. 

“We don’t see it as a border, but as a link.”