Interest in the anticipated clash between Morocco and France in the 2026 World Cup quarter-finals is not limited to technical aspects, as the refereeing file has returned to the forefront of discussion hours before the match which will be held at Boston Stadium, amid Moroccan fans recalling what happened in the semi-final of the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

That match, which ended with France winning 2-0, remains present in the memory of the Moroccan sports community, not only because of the result, but also because of the controversy that accompanied a number of refereeing decisions, which Moroccan sports circles considered influential in the course of the match, according to the Moroccan newspaper 'Le Matin'.

These circles believe that the Moroccan national team was denied two penalty kicks at the time, the first after a clash between Theo Hernandez and Sofiane Boufal inside the penalty area, and the second following a collision between Aurelien Tchouameni and Selim Amallah, while the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) did not intervene to review the two incidents.

Following the match, the Royal Moroccan Football Federation filed an official complaint with the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), objecting to the refereeing performance, and demanding a review of a number of decisions that it believed affected the course of the match, without changing the final result.

With the new match between the two teams approaching, talk about refereeing has returned strongly, and its intensity increased with the announcement by FIFA of the appointment of Argentine referee Facundo Tello to officiate the match. The decision raised questions in a number of Moroccan media outlets, which saw the selection of a referee from South America for a match featuring a European team and an African team as coming amid charged refereeing atmospheres witnessed in the tournament, following a series of controversial incidents in the knockout stages.

Tello holds positive memories for Moroccan fans, after he officiated the 2022 World Cup quarter-final match in which the 'Atlas Lions' defeated Portugal 1-0, reaching the semi-finals for the first time in the history of Arab and African teams. In contrast, this will be the first match that the Argentine referee officiates for the French national team, which added more attention to his appointment decision.

In the same context, Moroccan media outlets indicated that Tello's appointment came after controversy accompanied some refereeing decisions in the current tournament, considering that this increases the importance of providing a refereeing performance far from any controversy in one of the most prominent matches of the quarter-finals.

Moroccan fans hope that the match will be decided on the pitch only, and that the talk after the final whistle will be about technical performance and the result, not about refereeing decisions, as happened in the last meeting between the two teams in the World Cup.