Makhzen

A Fifa council member, the man behind Morocco’s ascendancy in world football and arguably the ultimate powerbroker in African football, Fouzi Lekjaa has made a shift in domestic politics. Is this a first step toward the prime minister's office?

By Pål Ødegård

It’s the afternoon of 13 June in Moscow, a day before the curtain raiser of the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia, and Fouzi Lekjaa sits down at a terrace bar. Despite the heat and the sun, he orders a coffee, puts his document folder aside, takes off his glasses, and then puts his head in his hands. The bar is a short stroll from Moscow’s Expocentre where the 68th Fifa congress has just concluded, and where the United States, Canada and Mexico - the United bid - has beaten Morocco 134 votes to 65 for the right to host the 2026 Fifa World Cup. Lekjaa had been responsible for the latter's bid. The losing one. Although the United bid always was the clear favourite to win, Lekjaa is dejected. He doesn’t like losing, even less so on Morocco’s fifth attempt - after failed bids for the 1994 (by just three votes to the US), 1998, 2006 and 2010 editions. 

Perhaps, it was just a difficult day for the chairman of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF). After all, the windfall for Fifa and its voting members from a World Cup in the US was simply too lucrative to resist. Then Morocco bandwagoned Spain and Portugal’s joint bid for the 2030 World Cup, which was ratified by Fifa in 2024 after the withdrawal of a South American bid. In any case, Lekjaa had long since been too important for Morocco’s long-term ambitions within football to be sidelined. 

Despite his middle-class origins, the 56-year-old is considered a “makhzen”  - those who belo...