25JUN

Haiti score after a 52-year wait

3 min read

14:11UTC

Lenny Joseph and Wilson Isidor scored Haiti's first World Cup goals in 52 years, though Morocco recovered to win 4-2 in Atlanta and finish Group C runners-up.

← Back to South Africa reach a first knockout Jump to analysis ↓

SportDeveloping

Key takeaway

Haiti score their first World Cup goals since 1974 but lose 4-2 as Morocco advance.

Haiti scored their first World Cup goals in 52 years against Morocco in Atlanta on 24 June, before losing 4-2 and bowing out of Group C. Lenny Joseph struck on 10 minutes and Wilson Isidor added a long-range second on 43; Haiti led 2-1 at the break. The last Haitian to score at a World Cup had been Emmanuel Sanon against Italy in 1974, the nation's only previous appearance.

The milestone measures absence rather than weakness. This Haiti squad is diaspora-built, most of its players raised in France, Canada or the United States, and it broke the drought in a city with one of the largest Haitian-American populations in the country. Getting back to the tournament at all was the achievement; the two goals closed a half-century gap.

Morocco answered through depth. Achraf Hakimi equalised on 39 minutes, Ismael Saibari put them ahead before half-time, and bench goals from Soufiane Rahimi (62') and Gessime Yassine (71') sealed second place. The Atlas Lions, who had drawn 1-1 with Brazil in their opener and beaten Scotland a week earlier, finish on 7 points and qualify as Group C runners-up. Brazil had already ended Haiti's knockout hopes with their own 3-0 win over the same opponents .

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Haiti last scored at a World Cup in 1974, when Emmanuel Sanon scored against Italy in West Germany. That is 52 years without a World Cup goal. On 24 June, Lenny Joseph scored after 10 minutes to end that drought, and Wilson Isidor added a second on 43 minutes. Haiti were actually leading 2-1 at half-time. Morocco came back to win 4-2, with three of their four goals coming from substitutes. Haiti exit the tournament without a win, but the two goals, the first in 52 years, matter far beyond the result. Most of Haiti's players were born or developed in France, Canada or the United States.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Haiti's 52-year goal drought at the World Cup reflects two compounding causes. First, Haiti qualified for only one other tournament between 1974 and 2026, meaning opportunities to score were structurally rare. Second, the Haitian federation historically funded domestic competition far below the level needed to develop technical forwards, relying instead on diaspora players whose skills came from clubs in France, Canada, and the United States.

Lenny Joseph developed at Valenciennes and Strasbourg in France; Wilson Isidor plays in Ligue 1 for Strasbourg. Both scorers on 24 June honed their finishing in French professional football, not in Haiti's domestic league. Two goals in Atlanta on 24 June were the direct product of that Ligue 1 experience.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Morocco advance as Group C runners-up on 7 points, a tougher bracket position than group winners, meaning they face Brazil if both sides progress past the round of 32.
Meaning
Haiti's two goals against Morocco re-open domestic federation investment discussions; the FHF (Federation Haitienne de Football) can point to this performance as evidence of diaspora talent worth systematic development.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from Qatar

Qatar

Primary parallel: Senegal at the 2002 World Cup, where a squad built largely on France-based players (most of whom had grown up in France) defeated France in the opening match and reached the quarter-finals.

Haiti's 2026 diaspora-built squad shares the same structural origin: most players raised and developed outside the national territory, returning to play under the national flag. Senegal's 2002 run showed that diaspora-origin squads can carry genuine quality when the footballing infrastructure has absorbed them.

Counter-parallel: Haiti's own 1974 World Cup campaign, where they appeared in West Germany, lost all three group matches 0-3 to Italy, 1-7 to Poland, and 0-4 to Argentina, yet Emmanuel Sanon's goal against Italy was the first ever scored against Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff at a World Cup. The 1974 goals came in a heavy defeat; the 2026 goals came with Haiti leading at half-time, a structurally different outcome.

Consensus view: Analysts at the Pan-African Football Institute (Dakar) have consistently noted that Morocco's 2026 squad is structurally more complete than their 2022 semi-final side. Mohamed Ouahbi's system keeps the defensive solidity of the Walid Regragui era while adding genuine depth on the bench; Rahimi and Yassine scored within 30 minutes of coming on, which is a measure of squad width most Group C sides cannot match.

Counter-view: Haitian football analyst and diaspora journalist Jonel Juste, writing in Le Nouvelliste, argues that the 2-1 half-time score was structurally achievable: Morocco conceded from a press-bypass, not from a tactical vulnerability. Haiti's goals came from direct play and a long-range effort, patterns that cannot be replicated against better-organised defences. Morocco's defensive weakness, if one exists, is in the wide channels from high presses, not from structured attacks.

Key tension: Whether Morocco's substitutes-driving-wins pattern can hold over five knockout matches, when opponents have data on Ouahbi's rotation habits and prepare press-traps against the players he brings on.

First Reported In

Update #29 · South Africa reach a first knockout

Al Jazeera· 25 Jun 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

French Football Federation

The FFF called an 11:00 CEST press conference for 28 July, at its Paris headquarters, following an extraordinary executive committee meeting, at which Zinedine Zidane is expected to be presented as head coach succeeding Didier Deschamps. As of this writing no communique confirms the appointment, contract length or start date.

Morocco

Morocco is pushing for the 2030 final at its Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, a planned 115,000-seat venue that would be the world's largest football stadium on completion. The venue is contested by a Spanish petition for the Santiago Bernabeu, and FIFA has fixed neither the venue nor the tournament's proposed 64-team format.

FIFA

FIFA's first tournament report, published 27 July, itemises nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and 300,000 square metres of custom-grown turf, with no revenue or cost figure attached. As a Swiss association answering to its own Congress rather than a treasury, FIFA has followed the same operational-before-financial sequence it used after Qatar 2022.

Javier Tebas / La Liga

La Liga president Javier Tebas said on 21 July that FIFA's system is rotten from the root and that Gianni Infantino's time as president has, in his words, concluded. Tebas has no vote in FIFA's process, so days after the IOC declined jurisdiction over a separate ethics complaint, he used the only instrument he has.

Mexico City government

Head of government Clara Brugada presented a closing report on 22 July crediting the tournament with 44 billion pesos of economic activity, 2,000-plus accelerated public works and 100,000 formal jobs in June alone. The city has not published the method behind that figure, and three other Mexican bodies count the same five weeks differently.

Town of Foxborough

Foxborough answered Kraft Group's June lawsuit on 7 July with a 61-page counterclaim, calling the stadium's owners 'a collection of multibillion-dollar corporations' trying to shift its $7.8 million security bill onto taxpayers. The town says its licensing power and its billing power run through the same board, and it wants the court to award its own costs too.