Morocco 4-2 Haiti: FIFA World Cup Match Report

Six goals, four of them before the break, and a group's worth of drama compressed into one afternoon. Morocco 4-2 Haiti finished as the highest-scoring match of Group C, and at half-time it was level at 2-2 — a scoreline no other first half in the group came close to.

That is a startling context for Morocco. Across their other two group matches they conceded once in total, drawing 1-1 with Brazil and beating Scotland 1-0. Haiti, who had lost 1-0 to Scotland and 3-0 to Brazil without scoring at all, put two past them inside forty-five minutes. Both of the goals Haiti scored in the entire tournament came in this half.

The second half restored the order the table had suggested all along. Morocco scored twice more without reply to take the match 4-2, turning a genuine contest into a four-goal haul that lifted their group tally from two goals to six. Haiti finished the tournament with no points, two scored and eight conceded, and the only forty-five minutes in which they matched an opponent were these. For Morocco the win was never in serious doubt after they went ahead, but the first half was the one passage of the group stage in which their defensive record deserted them.

Qualification, for Morocco, and second place with it. The win took them to seven points, level with Brazil, who beat Scotland 3-0 on the same day. Brazil topped the group on goal difference — 7:1 against Morocco's 6:3 — and the three goals conceded by Morocco across the whole group made that difference. Two of the three came here.

So the price of Morocco's afternoon was first place rather than qualification. Progress was never at risk once they went ahead in the second half, but the seeding was, and it was surrendered before the interval. Haiti went out bottom without a point. Scotland finished third on three, their own goal difference wrecked by the same round of fixtures.

Our pre-match call was Double Chance 1X (Morocco or Draw) at 1.42. It came in, and for forty-five minutes it was the draw half doing all the work — at 2-2 the bet was still ahead, and had the match ended there we would have collected anyway.

The pick was built on the gap between a Morocco side unbeaten against Brazil and Scotland and a Haiti side that had not scored in two matches. The gap was real; it simply did not show up until after half-time. What the first half exposed is that Morocco's record of one goal conceded in two games was thinner evidence than it looked. The bet survived that, which is precisely what a double chance is for, and 1.42 was a reasonable price on a team that finished level on points with Brazil. Verdict: won