New Delhi, July 11 -- BOSTON - For the second time in three years, Morocco's World Cup ended against France. The final score at Gillette Stadium was 2-0, the same as it had been in Qatar, and the geography was different but the arithmetic was not. Coach Mohamed Ouahbi, who had taken the Atlas Lions' job just 90 days before the tournament opened, watched France's clinical finishing end a run that had been more resilient than anyone outside the Moroccan camp had expected.

The loss on Thursday came in the quarterfinals of a tournament Morocco had navigated further than any African nation has in consecutive editions of the World Cup. They had held Brazil to a draw in the group stage at MetLife. They had defeated the Netherlands. They had bea...