CHICKENPIE.Estadio BBVA, Monterrey, Monday night. The Netherlands had ninety minutes to put away a team they were supposed to put away. They did not. Morocco had ninety minutes to survive a team they were not supposed to survive. They did. Then it went to extra time. Then, after a hundred and twenty minutes that neither side had any right to still be standing, it went to penalties. Then Yassine Bounou, a thirty-three-year-old goalkeeper who plays his club football in Saudi Arabia, leaned to his right and guessed correctly on a Dutch kick that was supposed to send the Dutch through. He guessed correctly on the next one too. Two saves. Two saves in a row. The Atlas Lions were through. The streak was over. The day of penalty-shootout upsets had its second act.
The scoreline — one to one after a hundred and twenty minutes — does not capture what happened. Cody Gakpo had given the Dutch the lead in the fifty-fifth minute, running onto a pass from Tijjani Reijnders, taking a touch, and finishing low into the corner. The Netherlands did what the Netherlands do. They controlled the ball. They kept the back door shut. They managed the game. They had seventy-one percent of possession after eighty minutes. They were, in the language of modern football, winning. Then Issa Diop — a centre-back on loan at West Ham from Eintracht Frankfurt — climbed above two Dutch defenders in the third minute of stoppage time, met a swinging free kick from the Moroccan right, and headed the ball into the bottom corner past a flat-footed Bart Verbruggen. Extra time. Penalties. Bounou. The rest.
The shootout was its own small theatre. The Dutch went first and buried theirs. Morocco missed theirs in response. The Dutch went two up after two rounds. Then Ismael Saibari — the PSV midfielder who had run himself into the ground for a hundred and twenty minutes — walked up and buried Morocco's third. The Dutch fourth went wide. Bounou read the angle. Then the Dutch fifth taker stepped up, the wrong way. Bounou leaned right. The ball went the other way. Morocco were through. The Moroccan bench emptied. Verbruggen stood in his goal with his hands on his hips, staring at nothing.
Morocco stuns Netherlands in World Cup penalty shootout. Bounou, Diop the heroes. — NBC News, 30 June 2026
For the Netherlands, the night is going to sting for a long time. They have not been eliminated at this stage of a major tournament since two thousand and ten. Sixteen years. A streak that stretched across four European Championships and four World Cups. A streak that survived the loss of Arjen Robben, the loss of Robin van Persie, the loss of Wesley Sneijder, the loss of an entire generation. It did not survive Yassine Bounou, leaning to his right, in the ninety-third minute of a game that was supposed to be over. Ronald Koeman will be asked about it for weeks. Memphis Depay, who came on as a substitute in extra time and missed the second Dutch penalty, will be asked about it for longer. The Dutch will fly home with a generation of questions and no answers.
For Morocco, the win is a reminder of what they have become. The Atlas Lions were the story of the two-thousand-and-twenty-two World Cup, when they became the first African team to reach a men's semi-final. They have carried that weight into this tournament. They have a new coach, a new generation, a new captain, and the same refusal to die quietly. They are now the first team through to the round of sixteen from the African confederation. They will meet the winner of England and the Democratic Republic of Congo in the round of sixteen on Sunday, July fifth, in Miami. They will be, by a distance, the team nobody wants to play.
Mr. Chicken was there for it, in the lower-right corner, in a tiny red-and-green Atlas Lions scarf. He was not between the sticks. He never is. He was watching, like the rest of us, like a witness in the cheap seats, when a thirty-three-year-old goalkeeper guessed two penalties correctly and a thirty-year-old centre-back climbed above a back line in stoppage time and the night turned, in Monterrey, into the second act of the most extraordinary day this World Cup has produced. Paraguay in the afternoon. Morocco in the evening. Two penalty-shootout upsets. One Chicken. The footballing gods are awake, and they are, it seems, in the mood for a story.
