LONG READ
His rise reflects the growing appeal of a hybrid “popular technocrat” profile that combines administrative expertise, managerial results from football diplomacy, and mass public legitimacy, rather than traditional party activism.
While the “World Cup 2030 government” hypothesis is plausible given the timeline and his skill set, it remains speculative; converting sporting and technocratic success into effective national governance faces real risks of personalisation, limited grassroots roots, and the gap between sectoral management and broad political leadership.
Introduction: From the Pitch to the Premiership?
The official entry of Fouzi Lekjaa into the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), announced on 25 July 2026 during the 32nd session of the party’s National Council held at the Abou Regreg Congress Palace in Salé, constitutes one of the most significant political events of Morocco’s pre-electoral period (Telquel, 2026; Médias24, 2026). For several weeks, rumours had multiplied around a possible partisan affiliation of the current Minister Delegate in charge of the Budget and president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (RMFF), without any official confirmation being provided (Le360, 2026a; Mountakhab, 2026). The suspense ended when Fatima-Zahra El Mansouri, national coordinator of PAM’s collegial leadership, announced Lekjaa’s affiliation, together with that of the president of the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab Regional Council, Yanja El Khattat, and their immediate integration into the party’s Political Bureau (Le360, 2026b; Maroc Hebdo, 2026).
This development comes at a particularly sensitive political moment. Morocco’s legislative elections are set for 23 September 2026, with an official campaign scheduled from 10 to 22 September (Maroc.ma, 2026a), and PAM now openly asserts its ambition to finish first in the ballot (PAM, 2026a). In this context, the partisan conversion of a figure as widely covered as Lekjaa cannot be reduced to a mere administrative change of label. It opens up a broader question about the transformation of Moroccan elites, the growing place of technocrats in national political life, and, more generally, about the possibility that the Kingdom is progressively entering a phase in which managerial competence, execution capacity, and mastery of large-scale projects become decisive criteria for the selection of leaders.
Hence the hypothesis now formulated by part of the press and Moroccan political circles: Fouzi Lekjaa could be called upon to play a central role in the next government, or even to head what some commentators have begun to call the “World Cup 2030 government.” The French newspaper Le Monde presented Lekjaa’s entry into PAM as a sign that he is “putting on the suit of a prime-ministerial contender” (Aublanc, 2026), while the Moroccan press has echoed the idea that Lekjaa has become, in the eyes of some party members, “a potential future head of government” (Le360, 2026a).
It is nonetheless important to avoid turning this hypothesis into a certainty. The Moroccan Constitution provides that the King appoints the Head of Government from within the party that finishes first in the elections to the House of Representatives, “in light of their results” (Kingdom of Morocco, 2011, art. 47). Consequently, no appointment of Lekjaa can be mechanically inferred from his joining PAM. For such a scenario to become constitutionally conceivable, several conditions would have to be met simultaneously: an electoral victory for PAM, or at the very least a political configuration giving it a dominant position; an actual candidacy by Lekjaa in the legislative elections; his election to Parliament; and finally a royal decision consistent with Article 47. According to Le360 (2026a), PAM’s bylaws would nonetheless allow Lekjaa to be designated head of government in the event of a PAM victory, even without holding a leadership position within the party apparatus, insofar as nothing in the Constitution formally prevents it.
The real question is therefore less whether “Lekjaa will become Prime Minister” than understanding why his name has become politically credible in the first place. This credibility is itself a political phenomenon worth analysing. It reveals an evolution in the Moroccan model of elite recruitment: the traditional politician is progressively giving way to the technocrat capable of translating strategic orientations into concrete achievements. Seen from this angle, Lekjaa represents a particularly interesting figure: a senior financial official, a specialist in budget management, a sports executive, an international negotiator, a central actor in Moroccan football diplomacy, and now a party official.
The hypothesis defended in this essay is that Lekjaa’s political rise should be understood as the product of the convergence of four structural dynamics: the growing technocratisation of Moroccan governance, the politicisation of football as a vector of legitimacy, the strategic centrality of the World Cup 2030 in the national calendar, and the search by parties for a new generation of leaders able to combine administrative efficiency with popular legitimacy. Yet this trajectory also carries significant risks: excessive personalisation of power, confusion between sporting success and governmental competence, weakening of party organisation, and the concentration of public expectations on a single man.
Joining PAM: A Political Event More Than a Simple Party Affiliation
Lekjaa’s entry into PAM carries particular weight because of the party’s position within the Moroccan political system. PAM is part of the current governing majority and, as the 23 September 2026 elections approach, is seeking to strengthen its territorial base and finish first in the ballot. Its National Council of 25 July explicitly reaffirmed this ambition, insisting on the party’s openness to new skills and profiles, and on its attachment to the record of the government in which it participates and to the reforms undertaken (PAM, 2026a). A few days earlier, the party’s Political Bureau had already affirmed its readiness for the 2026 elections while claiming pride in the outgoing executive’s record (PAM, 2026b).
In this context, recruiting Lekjaa carries a double value. For PAM, it represents a considerable acquisition of political capital: according to El Mansouri herself, the arrival of Lekjaa and El Khattat constitutes “added value” for the party because of the experience they have gained in the field and in the management of public affairs (Telquel, 2026). For Lekjaa, it constitutes, conversely, a transition from technocratic and sporting legitimacy toward electoral legitimacy — in a context where his candidacy in the Berkane constituency, his home town, had not yet been formally announced by the party, unlike other local candidacies already listed (Médias24, 2026).
This distinction is fundamental. Until recently, Lekjaa could exercise considerable influence without being a party man. His career rested on financial administration and the governance of football. He belonged precisely to that category of actors that political science literature defines as technocrats: individuals whose authority stems less from a long electoral career than from their administrative and professional competence.
York (2023), in her study of ministries and technocratic loyalty under authoritarian regimes, shows that the appointment of technocrats to government positions may respond to a logic of competence, but also to a logic of loyalty and institutional efficiency. The technocrat thereby becomes an intermediary between the state apparatus and the political imperatives of those in power. Lekjaa fits this model particularly well: his trajectory combines financial administration and sports management, and his profile is therefore not that of an ideologue or a political orator, but that of a manager of complex systems.
It is precisely this profile that can become particularly attractive in a country simultaneously engaged in major infrastructure projects, economic transformation, administrative modernisation, and preparation for an exceptionally large-scale global event. For its part, PAM can hope to turn Lekjaa’s affiliation into a direct electoral advantage. The RMFF president’s visibility extends well beyond traditional partisan boundaries; his name is associated with the historic performances of Moroccan football, notably the semi-final of the 2022 World Cup, but also with the progressive institutionalisation of Moroccan football on the African and international stage.
His recruitment is therefore likely to produce a transfer of legitimacy, whereby part of the symbolic capital accumulated in the sporting field is transferred to the political field. This mechanism is not unique to Morocco, but it takes on particular intensity there given the role football has recently played in building a shared sense of national pride.
The “Manager” as a New Figure of Moroccan Power
Contemporary politics is increasingly shaped by a managerial logic. Voters demand not only doctrines but, increasingly, concrete results: infrastructure, growth, jobs, health, education, transport, administrative efficiency, and improved public services. This evolution favours profiles able to present themselves as “problem-solvers” rather than as bearers of an ideological vision. In the Moroccan case, it meets an older tradition of state technocratisation.
The Moroccan political system nonetheless remains deeply structured by the centrality of the monarchy. Specialised literature has long emphasised the weight of the royal institution in defining political equilibria and its capacity to structure the partisan space through what Daadaoui (2010) describes as “rituals of power”: electoral and institutional arrangements that organise partisan competition while preserving monarchical pre-eminence. El Bouchikhi (2018), in a complementary perspective devoted to the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, shows that Moroccan parties structurally operate within an asymmetrical relationship with the monarchy, in which their capacity for action remains subordinate to their position within a broader political order.
This reading connects with a broader analysis of Morocco’s institutional trajectory since 2011, according to which the formal expansion of governmental and party prerogatives has been accompanied by an ongoing recomposition of the real balance of power, without challenging the monarchy’s centrality in final arbitration (Chtatou, 2026, 27 May). This feature helps explain why a profile like Lekjaa’s can acquire particular importance. He does not merely represent technocracy in the classic administrative sense. He embodies a form of performative technocracy — that is, a technocracy able to concretely demonstrate its results to the public.
In football, results are immediately visible and quantifiable: they are measured by qualifications, rankings, infrastructure built, club performances, competitions organised, and the capacity to secure major international events.
This visibility is politically valuable. The structural problem of classic technocrats is that they often suffer from a deficit of popular legitimacy: their authority rests on expertise recognised by peers, but rarely on emotional public support. Lekjaa, by contrast, has an exceptionally large popular capital for a technocrat. Football provides him with a direct bridge between administrative expertise and collective emotion — a bridge that Le Monde itself notes largely explains his popularity, with the Moroccan public judging him “on the performances of the Moroccan national football team more than on the country’s financial situation,” which he nonetheless manages as Budget Minister (Aublanc, 2026).
It is thus possible to speak of a hybridisation between technocracy and sporting populism — not in the classic ideological sense of populism, but in the sense of an ability to communicate with very broad audiences through a highly emotional and unifying domain. This communicative dimension is not unique to Lekjaa’s case: it extends a more general trait of Moroccan government, whose authority rests largely on a subtle interplay of symbolic capital, appeals to collective emotion, and strategic ambiguity in political communication (Chtatou, 2026, 12 March). This hybridisation is undoubtedly one of the most original traits of Lekjaa’s political profile compared with the technocrats who preceded him in successive Moroccan governments.
Why the 2030 World Cup Changes the Nature of the Political Calculation
The 2030 World Cup represents an event of a different nature from the major competitions previously organised in Morocco, such as the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations. It constitutes a long-term national project: FIFA plans a total of 101 matches across the entire competition, distributed among the various principal host countries, giving the event a considerable logistical, economic, and diplomatic scale (FIFA, 2026).
For Morocco, the stakes therefore extend well beyond football alone. The World Cup can accelerate rail, airport, and urban infrastructure; stimulate international tourism; strengthen economic attractiveness for investors; speed up the modernisation of stadiums and sporting facilities; develop cultural and creative industries; foster the creation of skilled jobs; strengthen connectivity between the Kingdom’s major cities; and increase Morocco’s diplomatic visibility on the world stage. It can also function as a structuring political deadline for the entire next governmental cycle.
A government taking office after the 23 September 2026 elections would thus have roughly four years to prepare for the 2030 deadline. The calendar is therefore almost perfectly aligned: elections in September 2026, formation of a new government in autumn 2026, intensive preparation of major projects between 2027 and 2030, and finally the actual organisation of the competition. It is this temporal coincidence that gives rise to the expression “World Cup 2030 government,” popularised by part of the Moroccan and international press following Lekjaa’s affiliation with PAM.
This expression does not necessarily mean that the future government would be composed exclusively around football. It rather designates a governmental team whose mandate would be strongly structured by the success of the major projects associated with the 2030 deadline. In this scenario, a man like Lekjaa has an obvious comparative advantage: he already knows the international interlocutors, the sporting institutions at continental and world level, the Iberian partners involved in co-hosting, and the precise organisational constraints tied to the event. As early as February 2025, the RMFF had already announced the creation of joint commissions to coordinate the efforts of Morocco, Spain, and Portugal in preparing the tournament — an institutional mechanism of which Lekjaa was one of the direct architects, alongside the Morocco 2030 Foundation and the professional leagues (Maroc.ma, 2026b). Football thus becomes, in this specific context, a genuine school of international governance for whoever leads it.
The Decisive Question: Can Sporting Success Be Converted into Governmental Success?
This is where the analysis must become more cautious. Running a sports federation and running a government are not equivalent functions. The RMFF is a sectoral organisation with a precise mission and a circumscribed scope of action. Government, by contrast, must manage contradictory interests, arbitrate between competing sectors, negotiate with organised social groups, respond to trade-union demands, manage cyclical economic crises, ensure the continuity of essential public services, and build lasting political compromises within a coalition.
An excellent manager of football does not therefore automatically become an excellent head of government. The reasoning that “whoever succeeded in football will succeed with the state” would constitute a category error that must be avoided. It would, however, also be wrong to minimise the transferable skills between the two worlds. Preparing a World Cup indeed requires certain capacities for inter-institutional coordination, diplomatic negotiation, multi-year budget management, and crisis communication that are directly relevant to governmental action.
The question, then, is not whether Lekjaa is capable of “playing the role of a Prime Minister” because he successfully leads national football, but rather whether his overall career demonstrates a proven capacity to manage complex organisations in highly constrained temporal and institutional environments. In this respect, his experience at the Ministry of Budget, where he has held the position of Minister Delegate since October 2021, is essential: it constitutes the administrative and financial counterpart to his action at the head of the RMFF.
The fact that he simultaneously holds a budgetary portfolio within government and leads the national federation creates a rather unusual hybrid profile in the Moroccan political landscape, combining public finance, administration, elite sport, and international diplomacy. This combination probably explains his recent political rise more than his sporting success alone, spectacular as it was in 2022. It is also this dual role — ministerial and federal — that critical coverage of his trajectory highlights, with some observers suggesting that his “parachuting” into a party “weakened by judicial scandals and in the midst of a leadership crisis” may have been facilitated by support extending beyond the party apparatus alone (Wikipedia, 2026, citing Aublanc, 2026).
PAM as a Vehicle of Transformation
Joining PAM must also be analysed from the party’s own point of view. PAM has historically been associated with a strategy of political modernisation and the pursuit of a new administrative and economic elite. Its trajectory fits into a Moroccan party landscape in which political formations periodically seek to renew their cadres and attract figures capable of transcending their traditional activist base.
Lekjaa’s entry corresponds perfectly to this logic of renewal. It allows PAM to present itself as the party of competence, management, and major national projects, at a moment when the party is positioning itself as the main challenger in the electoral race — Le360 (2026a) noting, in this regard, the “merciless duel” pitting it against the Istiqlal Party in several regions, notably those of the Sahara. The National Council of 25 July 2026 placed particular emphasis on openness to new competencies and on the party’s wish to place itself first in the elections (PAM, 2026a).
Lekjaa’s recruitment can therefore be read as a deliberate strategic repositioning. The party is not simply seeking additional votes: it is seeking a figure able to embody a credible promise of governmental performance. Tellingly, Lekjaa’s integration into PAM’s Political Bureau occurred in an almost automatic manner, under the party’s bylaws, which guarantee a seat on this senior executive body to any sitting minister who joins its ranks (Le360, 2026c) — Lekjaa, at this stage, being neither secretary-general of the party nor a member of its collegial presidency (Le360, 2026a).
In a political environment where trust in parties can be fragile, this strategy of co-opting outside profiles is electorally rational: a figure external to traditional partisan careers can appear more competent, more modern, and less bound by the internal disputes that regularly affect party structures. But this strategy carries a non-negligible structural risk: it can heighten the party’s dependence on a single individual. A solid political party should, in principle, be able to collectively produce public policies, cadres, programmes, and leaders. If its electoral appeal rests primarily on one providential individual, its organisational transformation necessarily remains incomplete and potentially reversible.
The “Lekjaa phenomenon” could therefore be either the starting point of a genuine political professionalisation of PAM, or, conversely, a further manifestation of the growing personalisation of Moroccan politics — a phenomenon the local press has not failed to comment on, noting, behind the unanimity displayed at the National Council, persistent “questions” about the real purpose of this affiliation (Le360, 2026a).
The “Establishment” Hypothesis: What Can Actually Be Demonstrated?
The claim that “the Moroccan establishment is preparing Lekjaa” for the premiership must be handled with great methodological caution. There are indirect indications that make the hypothesis politically intelligible. Several Moroccan and international media outlets have noted his rise, his entry into PAM, and his positioning weeks before the elections. Le Monde explicitly described Lekjaa as donning the “suit of a prime-ministerial contender” (Aublanc, 2026), while the French-language Wikipedia entry, citing that article, reports that some observers describe his affiliation as a “parachuting orchestrated by the royal palace” — a phrase that, even though it circulates in public debate, does not in itself constitute established factual proof.
No public source to date establishes an explicit royal decision or any advance “designation” of Lekjaa for the post of head of government. It is therefore necessary to rigorously distinguish three quite different levels of analysis. The first level is purely factual: Lekjaa joined PAM on 25 July 2026, a fact solidly documented by multiple concordant sources (Telquel, 2026; Médias24, 2026; Le360, 2026b, 2026c; Maroc Hebdo, 2026; Mountakhab, 2026). The second level is political: his affiliation considerably increases his objective capacity to enter the national electoral — and potentially governmental — arena. The third level is prospective: his profile could make him compatible with the office of head of government if the full set of required political and constitutional conditions were to be met.
Moving directly from the third level to the first — that is, presenting as settled an appointment that remains hypothetical — would be methodologically incorrect and would owe more to journalistic speculation than to rigorous political analysis. The existence of rumours about preparation by “the establishment” in no way constitutes proof of an actual decision, however intuitively plausible the hypothesis may be.
That said, within the Moroccan political system, it would also be naive to reduce political analysis to mere formal electoral mechanics. The specialised literature on Morocco consistently emphasises the structuring importance of the monarchy in organising elites, institutions, and party strategies (Daadaoui, 2010; El Bouchikhi, 2018; York, 2023). The right analytical question is therefore not “did the King personally choose Lekjaa?” — a question to which publicly available data simply do not allow an answer — but rather: does the Moroccan political system today produce structural incentives favourable to the emergence of profiles of Lekjaa’s type? The answer to this second, more modest but empirically better-grounded question, appears to be affirmative.
The Precedent of Political Technocratisation
Lekjaa’s evolution fits within a broader trend in contemporary Moroccan governance: the coexistence, within successive governments, of officials drawn from classic party politics with technocratic, administrative, economic, and professional profiles recruited for their sectoral expertise. Morocco has frequently mobilised technocratic competencies to lead sectors deemed strategic, a logic particularly visible in the economic, financial, industrial, and infrastructural fields over several decades.
Lekjaa’s case, however, differs markedly from this precedent because it adds a dimension of mass popularity largely unprecedented for a technocratic profile. He could thus represent the emergence of a new generation of technocrats that might be described as “popular technocrats” — profiles whose authority rests simultaneously on recognised technical expertise and on broad emotional support within public opinion.
This hybrid type of profile is particularly interesting in a context where public action must be able to produce both measurable concrete results and sufficiently broad social buy-in to legitimise the reforms undertaken. Football here plays the role of a common national language, transcending the regional, social, and generational divides that usually run through Moroccan society. It allows a figure of administrative background to acquire a popular visibility that classic technocrats generally lack, for want of comparable media exposure.
This dimension explains why the Atlas Lions’ success in 2022 had indirect but lasting political consequences. That historic sporting result created considerable emotional capital around the national team and its institutional leaders. Lekjaa became, on that occasion, one of the principal institutional representatives of this collective achievement, a position he has since consolidated through the successful organisation of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations on Moroccan soil. He thus possesses something many classic technocrats lack: a national story that voters can themselves tell, and with which they can emotionally identify.
Would a “World Cup Government” Really Be a Good Thing?
The expression “World Cup government” is rhetorically appealing, but it deserves scrutiny on the merits. A government organised around the 2030 objective could benefit from exceptional strategic coherence. The various ministries could be mobilised around a shared, binding timetable covering infrastructure, tourism, transport, urban planning, security, culture, the environment, and the digital economy. The World Cup could thus become a powerful catalyst for administrative reform, comparable to the momentum generated by other recent major international events organised by the Kingdom, such as the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.
But the opposite is equally possible, and this is where the main risk of this configuration lies. A government overly focused on the tournament’s media success could favour visible infrastructure at the expense of less spectacular but equally essential social needs. Building stadiums, roads, and tourist facilities produces images that are immediately marketable on the international stage, whereas structural reform of schools, health care, or public administration requires years of sustained effort and, by its very nature, produces far less immediate international visibility.
The real test of a potential “World Cup government” would therefore be its ability to use the 2030 deadline as a genuine lever for structural development, rather than as a mere temporary international showcase. International experience with sporting mega-events consistently shows that their lasting impact depends closely on the quality of governance put in place, the rigour of upstream planning, and, above all, the effective use of infrastructure built after the event itself has ended. The World Cup should therefore not be seen as an end in itself, but as a structuring deadline around which a broader, more durable national development strategy could be organised.
For Morocco, the fundamental medium-term question is the following: what will concretely remain of the World Cup in 2031, once the event is over and international media attention has faded? If the answer is limited to modern but under-used stadiums, the lasting political and economic effect would necessarily be limited. If, on the other hand, the answer includes better national mobility, durably improved rail infrastructure, better-connected cities, a lastingly strengthened tourism sector, a more efficient public administration, a competitive national sports industry, more skilled jobs created, and better economic integration within the Euro-Mediterranean space, then the 2030 deadline could indeed constitute a historic turning point for the Kingdom’s development trajectory.
The Limits of the “Lekjaa Model”
The first identifiable risk is that of excessive personalisation of power. If the entire national development strategy were to be identified with a single individual, that individual’s eventual failure could quickly become the failure of the entire collective project he is meant to embody. This fragility is structural to any heavily personalised model of governance, regardless of the individual’s own qualities.
The second risk is the confusion between sharp sectoral expertise and general political competence. Public policy cannot, by definition, be reduced to the mere management of technical projects, however complex. It also necessarily involves essential dimensions of social justice, resource redistribution, democratic representation of different social groups, ongoing political negotiation, and renewed democratic legitimacy.
The third risk is that of a deficit in party grassroots implantation. Lekjaa is entering electoral politics relatively late in his career. Within the particularly tight timeframe before the September 2026 ballot, he must therefore build genuine local electoral roots, a lasting activist culture within the party, and the capacity to produce a complete political programme going beyond the sole register of major infrastructure projects.
The fourth risk is directly tied to the level of public expectations he has raised. The higher the expectations placed on a man publicly presented as a “super-manager” capable of resolving the country’s structural problems, the more the social and media tolerance for error mechanically decreases, potentially exposing Lekjaa to rapid political wear in the event of difficulties.
The fifth risk concerns more specifically the governance of football itself and the question of separation of functions. The prolonged coexistence of senior political functions and senior sporting leadership functions necessarily raises legitimate questions of separation of responsibilities and institutional governance, even in the absence of any formally established conflict of interest to date. The lasting credibility of both sporting and political institutions indeed requires that respective responsibilities be clearly delineated and perceived as such by public opinion.
The 2026 Election as the Real Test
Fouzi Lekjaa’s first real test will not be the 2030 deadline, but rather that of 2026. The electoral calendar is now officially set: elections for the members of the House of Representatives will take place on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, with an official campaign scheduled from 10 to 22 September (Maroc.ma, 2026a).
The stakes of this ballot are twofold for Lekjaa and for the party welcoming him. First, Lekjaa will have to demonstrate that he possesses genuine electoral capacity of his own, distinct from his national media notoriety. His nationwide popularity in no way guarantees victory in a specific local constituency, where on-the-ground dynamics, established clientelist networks, and specific territorial issues play a decisive role. He will therefore have to convert his national notoriety into concrete electoral organisation, lasting territorial roots, and a credible, detailed political programme — it being noted that, at the time PAM published its list of candidates by constituency, his own candidacy in Berkane, his home town, had not yet been formally confirmed by the party (Médias24, 2026).
Second, PAM itself will have to demonstrate that it can turn Lekjaa’s arrival into genuinely collective momentum, rather than a mere communication operation centred on an isolated figure. If PAM finishes first in the 23 September ballot, the hypothesis of Lekjaa acceding to the premiership will become politically far more serious and far more probable. If, on the other hand, PAM finishes behind another party at the end of the vote, Article 47 of the Constitution will then become the principal legal constraint against any claim by Lekjaa to the premiership, whatever his personal popularity may otherwise be.
It is therefore premature, at this stage, to speak of governmental succession before the popular vote has even taken place. But it would be equally imprudent to regard Lekjaa’s entry into PAM as a secondary or purely anecdotal event. It constitutes, whatever the final outcome of the elections, a qualitatively significant change in Morocco’s political configuration as this major electoral deadline approaches.
Toward a New Generation of Moroccan Political Leadership?
The Lekjaa phenomenon could ultimately extend beyond his own person and his own individual trajectory. More broadly, it could signal the emergence of a new type of Moroccan political elite: leaders drawn mainly from public administration, private business, finance, economic diplomacy, elite sport, or major national projects, rather than from traditional party careers built over several decades of activism.
This evolution would correspond to a broader transformation of contemporary politics, observable in many national contexts beyond the Moroccan case alone. Citizens increasingly evaluate governments on their concrete ability to deliver tangible results rather than solely on the coherence of their ideological discourse. Politics is thus becoming, at least in part, a matter of effectively managing contemporary administrative and economic complexity.
From this perspective, Morocco may, in the years ahead, seek figures capable of simultaneously connecting the strategic vision carried by the monarchical institution, on-the-ground public administration, domestic and foreign private investment, major infrastructure projects, and the Kingdom’s international communication. Lekjaa possesses precisely several of these characteristics combined within a single individual career.
His professional background allows him to speak, at once, the language of public financial administration, that of elite sport, that of international institutions such as FIFA and the Confederation of African Football, and that of major national infrastructure projects. It is this rare versatility, even more than his popularity alone, that probably constitutes his main distinctive political capital in the current Moroccan context.
The Paradox: The More Apolitical Lekjaa Appears, the More Political He Becomes
There is, finally, a particularly interesting paradox worth highlighting to conclude this analysis. Lekjaa’s political strength stems partly from the fact that, until very recently, he was not perceived as a traditional politician in the classic sense of the term. In the eyes of public opinion, he could appear essentially as a competent professional, an effective manager, a man of concrete results rather than of partisan discourse.
His formal entry into PAM necessarily changes this collective perception. From now on, each of his public decisions can be read through an explicitly political lens, which was not systematically the case before, when he mainly expressed himself as a sports leader or a technical budget official.
This transformation will be particularly decisive during the electoral campaign, which formally opens on 10 September 2026. His public discourse will necessarily have to evolve, moving from the register of football to that of general public power, from sporting performance to concrete social policy, from sports infrastructure to everyday public services. He will have to demonstrate, before voters and observers alike, that he possesses a global vision of Morocco that extends well beyond the field of football and technical budget management alone.
If he succeeds in this, his move into electoral politics could become a genuine textbook case of the successful conversion of technocratic capital into lasting electoral capital, potentially inspiring other similar profiles in future electoral cycles. If, on the other hand, he fails to make this shift in register, his affiliation with PAM could, in retrospect, be interpreted as a mere opportunistic attempt to convert sporting popularity into political power, without any genuine underlying ideology or societal project.
Conclusion: The “World Cup Government” as Hypothesis, Not Yet as Reality
Fouzi Lekjaa’s entry into PAM undeniably marks a significant new stage in his personal and professional trajectory. It comes just weeks before the 23 September 2026 legislative elections, in a context where PAM openly claims the ambition of becoming the Kingdom’s leading parliamentary force at the end of the ballot (PAM, 2026a).
His profile appears exceptionally well suited to the particular historical moment Morocco is currently going through. It brings together three distinct forms of political capital: the technocratic capital of the experienced senior civil servant, the managerial capital of the internationally recognised sports leader, and the popular capital of the institutional official closely associated with the recent renaissance of Moroccan national football. To these three dimensions is now added, since 25 July 2026, a fourth: the properly political capital conferred by his formal party affiliation.
It is this unusual combination of four forms of capital that lends credibility, in the eyes of a significant part of public opinion and observers, to the hypothesis of a future accession by Lekjaa to the premiership. But one must firmly resist the temptation to turn a plausible political hypothesis into an already established fact. No publicly available evidence to date allows one to affirm with certainty that Lekjaa was formally designated or “prepared” in advance by the Moroccan establishment to become head of government. What is, however, empirically observable is a remarkable convergence between his individual professional career, the objective governance needs of contemporary Morocco, and the institutional calendar of the 2030 World Cup.
The timing is almost too perfect not to legitimately fuel political and media speculation: elections in September 2026, the opening of a new governmental cycle from autumn 2026, the programmed acceleration of major national projects through to 2030, and finally the actual organisation of the World Cup. In this specific context, the expression “World Cup 2030 government” carries genuine analytical value for the researcher, beyond its immediate journalistic dimension. It designates less a government personally led by Lekjaa than a more general model of governance, centred on rigorous execution, inter-institutional coordination, major structuring projects, and the Kingdom’s increased international visibility.
Should Lekjaa indeed become Head of Government at the end of the electoral and constitutional process, his main challenge would then be to demonstrate that the qualities that made him an effective manager of Moroccan football can genuinely be transposed to the structural complexity of running the state. He would have to transform the logic of immediate sporting results into a logic of lasting public results: no longer merely winning matches, organising international competitions, and building sports infrastructure, but concretely improving schools, hospitals, employment, social justice, national economic competitiveness, and the overall quality of public services provided to Moroccan citizens.
It is precisely there, in this demanding transposition from one register to another, that the future of the “Lekjaa model” will truly be decided. The 2030 World Cup could provide him with a formidable political and symbolic platform. But it could just as easily become his greatest personal and political test, for organising a World Cup is one thing; governing a country while it simultaneously organises a World Cup is quite another.
The real political question of the coming months is therefore perhaps not, ultimately: “Will Fouzi Lekjaa become Morocco’s next Prime Minister?” It is deeper, and concerns the entire national political system: is Morocco moving from a generation of leaders primarily defined by their historical political affiliation to a generation in which managerial competence, concrete execution capacity, and the successful management of major projects themselves become autonomous and sufficient sources of political legitimacy? If this is indeed the case, Lekjaa could be not only a credible potential candidate for the premiership, but also the precursor symbol of a deeper transformation of the Moroccan ruling elite as a whole. The 2030 World Cup would then be not simply another sporting competition: it could become the institutional backdrop for a new phase of contemporary Moroccan governance.
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Fédération Internationale de Football Association. (2025, September 26). Les dirigeants marocains, espagnols et portugais évoquent la Coupe du Monde de la FIFA 2030™ aux côtés de Gianni Infantino [Moroccan, Spanish, and Portuguese officials discuss the FIFA World Cup 2030™ alongside Gianni Infantino]. https://www.fifa.com
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Le360. (2026a, July 26). Législatives : après l’adhésion de Fouzi Lekjaa au PAM, des questionnements fusent [Legislative elections: after Fouzi Lekjaa’s joining PAM, questions multiply]. https://fr.le360.ma/politique/legislatives-apres-ladhesion-de-fouzi-lekjaa-au-pam-des-questionnements-fusent_5VPLRE3W2JBYVHFXVZGNGTJ4VU/
Le360. (2026b, July 25). Officiel. Fouzi Lekjaa et Yanja El Khattat rejoignent le PAM [Official. Fouzi Lekjaa and Yanja El Khattat join PAM]. https://fr.le360.ma/politique/officiel-fouzi-lekjaa-et-yanja-el-khattat-rejoignent-le-pam_JEJT4BTMKBEWDDFB73GNDWB47E/
Le360. (2026c, July 24). L’entrée de Fouzi Lekjaa au sein du PAM se confirme [Fouzi Lekjaa’s entry into PAM is confirmed]. https://fr.le360.ma/politique/lentree-de-fouzi-lekjaa-au-sein-du-pam-se-confirme_2BU2MHPVZZDFHCX53ETAACOR5M/
Maroc Hebdo. (2026, July 25). Fin des spéculations : Fouzi Lekjaa officiellement au PAM [End of speculation: Fouzi Lekjaa officially joins PAM]. https://www.maroc-hebdo.com/article/fin-des-speculations-fouzi-lekjaa-officiellement-au-pam
Maroc.ma. (2026a, March 6). La date des élections des membres de la Chambre des représentants fixée au mercredi 23 septembre 2026 [Date of the House of Representatives elections set for Wednesday, 23 September 2026]. Official Portal of the Kingdom of Morocco. https://www.maroc.ma
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Médias24. (2026, July 25). Fouzi Lekjaa et Ynja Khattat rejoignent officiellement le PAM [Fouzi Lekjaa and Ynja Khattat officially join PAM]. https://medias24.com/2026/07/25/fouzi-lekjaa-et-ynja-khattat-rejoignent-officiellement-le-pam-video-1730291/
Mountakhab. (2026, July 25). Fouzi Lekjaa officialise son adhésion au PAM [Fouzi Lekjaa formalises his affiliation with PAM]. https://mountakhab.net/fouzi-lekjaa-officialise-son-adhesion-au-pam/
Party of Authenticity and Modernity. (2026a, July 25). البيان الختامي للمجلس الوطني: البام يجدد رهانه على تصدر انتخابات 2026 ويؤكد دعمه للإصلاحات والقضايا الوطنية [Closing statement of the National Council: PAM renews its bid to finish first in the 2026 elections and reaffirms its support for reform and national issues]. PAM.
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York, E. (2023). Ministries matter: Technocrats and regime loyalty under autocracy. Political Science Research and Methods. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2023.1
About Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.
View all posts by Dr. Mohamed Chtatou →
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Key Takeaways:
Key Takeaways:
Fouzi Lekjaa’s entry into PAM in July 2026 marks a significant political shift, positioning the high-profile Budget Minister and football federation president as a potential contender for a major governmental role ahead of the September 2026 elections and the 2030 World Cup.
His rise reflects the growing appeal of a hybrid “popular technocrat” profile that combines administrative expertise, managerial results from football diplomacy, and mass public legitimacy, rather than traditional party activism.
While the “World Cup 2030 government” hypothesis is plausible given the timeline and his skill set, it remains speculative; converting sporting and technocratic success into effective national governance faces real risks of personalisation, limited grassroots roots, and the gap between sectoral management and broad political leadership.
Introduction: From the Pitch to the Premiership?
The official entry of Fouzi Lekjaa into the Party of Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), announced on 25 July 2026 during the 32nd session of the party’s National Council held at the Abou Regreg Congress Palace in Salé, constitutes one of the most significant political events of Morocco’s pre-electoral period (Telquel, 2026; Médias24, 2026). For several weeks, rumours had multiplied around a possible partisan affiliation of the current Minister Delegate in charge of the Budget and president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (RMFF), without any official confirmation being provided (Le360, 2026a; Mountakhab, 2026). The suspense ended when Fatima-Zahra El Mansouri, national coordinator of PAM’s collegial leadership, announced Lekjaa’s affiliation, together with that of the president of the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab Regional Council, Yanja El Khattat, and their immediate integration into the party’s Political Bureau (Le360, 2026b; Maroc Hebdo, 2026).
This development comes at a particularly sensitive political moment. Morocco’s legislative elections are set for 23 September 2026, with an official campaign scheduled from 10 to 22 September (Maroc.ma, 2026a), and PAM now openly asserts its ambition to finish first in the ballot (PAM, 2026a). In this context, the partisan conversion of a figure as widely covered as Lekjaa cannot be reduced to a mere administrative change of label. It opens up a broader question about the transformation of Moroccan elites, the growing place of technocrats in national political life, and, more generally, about the possibility that the Kingdom is progressively entering a phase in which managerial competence, execution capacity, and mastery of large-scale projects become decisive criteria for the selection of leaders.
Hence the hypothesis now formulated by part of the press and Moroccan political circles: Fouzi Lekjaa could be called upon to play a central role in the next government, or even to head what some commentators have begun to call the “World Cup 2030 government.” The French newspaper Le Monde presented Lekjaa’s entry into PAM as a sign that he is “putting on the suit of a prime-ministerial contender” (Aublanc, 2026), while the Moroccan press has echoed the idea that Lekjaa has become, in the eyes of some party members, “a potential future head of government” (Le360, 2026a).
It is nonetheless important to avoid turning this hypothesis into a certainty. The Moroccan Constitution provides that the King appoints the Head of Government from within the party that finishes first in the elections to the House of Representatives, “in light of their results” (Kingdom of Morocco, 2011, art. 47). Consequently, no appointment of Lekjaa can be mechanically inferred from his joining PAM. For such a scenario to become constitutionally conceivable, several conditions would have to be met simultaneously: an electoral victory for PAM, or at the very least a political configuration giving it a dominant position; an actual candidacy by Lekjaa in the legislative elections; his election to Parliament; and finally a royal decision consistent with Article 47. According to Le360 (2026a), PAM’s bylaws would nonetheless allow Lekjaa to be designated head of government in the event of a PAM victory, even without holding a leadership position within the party apparatus, insofar as nothing in the Constitution formally prevents it.
The real question is therefore less whether “Lekjaa will become Prime Minister” than understanding why his name has become politically credible in the first place. This credibility is itself a political phenomenon worth analysing. It reveals an evolution in the Moroccan model of elite recruitment: the traditional politician is progressively giving way to the technocrat capable of translating strategic orientations into concrete achievements. Seen from this angle, Lekjaa represents a particularly interesting figure: a senior financial official, a specialist in budget management, a sports executive, an international negotiator, a central actor in Moroccan football diplomacy, and now a party official.
The hypothesis defended in this essay is that Lekjaa’s political rise should be understood as the product of the convergence of four structural dynamics: the growing technocratisation of Moroccan governance, the politicisation of football as a vector of legitimacy, the strategic centrality of the World Cup 2030 in the national calendar, and the search by parties for a new generation of leaders able to combine administrative efficiency with popular legitimacy. Yet this trajectory also carries significant risks: excessive personalisation of power, confusion between sporting success and governmental competence, weakening of party organisation, and the concentration of public expectations on a single man.
Joining PAM: A Political Event More Than a Simple Party Affiliation
Lekjaa’s entry into PAM carries particular weight because of the party’s position within the Moroccan political system. PAM is part of the current governing majority and, as the 23 September 2026 elections approach, is seeking to strengthen its territorial base and finish first in the ballot. Its National Council of 25 July explicitly reaffirmed this ambition, insisting on the party’s openness to new skills and profiles, and on its attachment to the record of the government in which it participates and to the reforms undertaken (PAM, 2026a). A few days earlier, the party’s Political Bureau had already affirmed its readiness for the 2026 elections while claiming pride in the outgoing executive’s record (PAM, 2026b).
In this context, recruiting Lekjaa carries a double value. For PAM, it represents a considerable acquisition of political capital: according to El Mansouri herself, the arrival of Lekjaa and El Khattat constitutes “added value” for the party because of the experience they have gained in the field and in the management of public affairs (Telquel, 2026). For Lekjaa, it constitutes, conversely, a transition from technocratic and sporting legitimacy toward electoral legitimacy — in a context where his candidacy in the Berkane constituency, his home town, had not yet been formally announced by the party, unlike other local candidacies already listed (Médias24, 2026).
This distinction is fundamental. Until recently, Lekjaa could exercise considerable influence without being a party man. His career rested on financial administration and the governance of football. He belonged precisely to that category of actors that political science literature defines as technocrats: individuals whose authority stems less from a long electoral career than from their administrative and professional competence.
York (2023), in her study of ministries and technocratic loyalty under authoritarian regimes, shows that the appointment of technocrats to government positions may respond to a logic of competence, but also to a logic of loyalty and institutional efficiency. The technocrat thereby becomes an intermediary between the state apparatus and the political imperatives of those in power. Lekjaa fits this model particularly well: his trajectory combines financial administration and sports management, and his profile is therefore not that of an ideologue or a political orator, but that of a manager of complex systems.
It is precisely this profile that can become particularly attractive in a country simultaneously engaged in major infrastructure projects, economic transformation, administrative modernisation, and preparation for an exceptionally large-scale global event. For its part, PAM can hope to turn Lekjaa’s affiliation into a direct electoral advantage. The RMFF president’s visibility extends well beyond traditional partisan boundaries; his name is associated with the historic performances of Moroccan football, notably the semi-final of the 2022 World Cup, but also with the progressive institutionalisation of Moroccan football on the African and international stage.
His recruitment is therefore likely to produce a transfer of legitimacy, whereby part of the symbolic capital accumulated in the sporting field is transferred to the political field. This mechanism is not unique to Morocco, but it takes on particular intensity there given the role football has recently played in building a shared sense of national pride.
Football as a New Source of Political Legitimacy
Lekjaa’s career is inseparable from the transformation of Moroccan football into an instrument of national power. Since he took over the RMFF presidency in 2014, Moroccan football has undergone a profound institutional and infrastructural restructuring. The historic qualification of the Atlas Lions for the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup marked a major symbolic turning point. Football is no longer merely a sporting sector: it has become a vector of national pride, diplomacy, international projection, and soft power.
FIFA’s decision to officially designate Morocco, Spain, and Portugal as co-hosts of the 2030 World Cup considerably reinforced this dimension. After the joint bid of the three countries remained the sole candidacy for hosting the tournament (FIFA, 2023), FIFA’s Extraordinary Congress formally designated the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 editions of the competition in December 2024 (FIFA, 2024). Morocco’s selection is particularly significant: the country will be the first North African state to host part of a men’s World Cup. The tournament will also be exceptional for its transcontinental dimension, with Spain, Portugal, and Morocco as the principal host countries, while Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay will host the centenary commemorative matches (FIFA, 2026).
Seen from this angle, Lekjaa is not simply the president of the national federation: he has become one of the institutional faces of this national project. As early as September 2025, Moroccan, Spanish, and Portuguese officials were jointly discussing progress on the hosting file alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino (FIFA, 2025). In July 2026, the Kingdom’s official portal reported that the organisation of the 2030 World Cup constituted a “strategic project” within the framework of the royal vision, stressing the need for early preparation, permanent coordination among the institutions concerned, and close articulation between the Morocco 2030 Foundation and the RMFF (Maroc.ma, 2026b).
This official statement matters because it reveals how the World Cup is conceptualised by Moroccan officials: not as a mere one-off sporting event, but as a transversal national undertaking. Preparing such an event indeed requires competencies that closely resemble those needed to run a government: interministerial coordination, multi-year budget management, infrastructure development, security, diplomacy, transport, tourism, urban planning, international communication, relations with foreign partners, and the ability to meet extremely tight deadlines set by an international body. It is precisely at this intersection that Lekjaa’s figure becomes politically interesting: through his roles as Minister Delegate for the Budget and federation president, he already combines a large part of the skills that this transversal governance requires.
Lekjaa’s career is inseparable from the transformation of Moroccan football into an instrument of national power. Since he took over the RMFF presidency in 2014, Moroccan football has undergone a profound institutional and infrastructural restructuring. The historic qualification of the Atlas Lions for the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup marked a major symbolic turning point. Football is no longer merely a sporting sector: it has become a vector of national pride, diplomacy, international projection, and soft power.
FIFA’s decision to officially designate Morocco, Spain, and Portugal as co-hosts of the 2030 World Cup considerably reinforced this dimension. After the joint bid of the three countries remained the sole candidacy for hosting the tournament (FIFA, 2023), FIFA’s Extraordinary Congress formally designated the hosts of the 2030 and 2034 editions of the competition in December 2024 (FIFA, 2024). Morocco’s selection is particularly significant: the country will be the first North African state to host part of a men’s World Cup. The tournament will also be exceptional for its transcontinental dimension, with Spain, Portugal, and Morocco as the principal host countries, while Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay will host the centenary commemorative matches (FIFA, 2026).
Seen from this angle, Lekjaa is not simply the president of the national federation: he has become one of the institutional faces of this national project. As early as September 2025, Moroccan, Spanish, and Portuguese officials were jointly discussing progress on the hosting file alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino (FIFA, 2025). In July 2026, the Kingdom’s official portal reported that the organisation of the 2030 World Cup constituted a “strategic project” within the framework of the royal vision, stressing the need for early preparation, permanent coordination among the institutions concerned, and close articulation between the Morocco 2030 Foundation and the RMFF (Maroc.ma, 2026b).
This official statement matters because it reveals how the World Cup is conceptualised by Moroccan officials: not as a mere one-off sporting event, but as a transversal national undertaking. Preparing such an event indeed requires competencies that closely resemble those needed to run a government: interministerial coordination, multi-year budget management, infrastructure development, security, diplomacy, transport, tourism, urban planning, international communication, relations with foreign partners, and the ability to meet extremely tight deadlines set by an international body. It is precisely at this intersection that Lekjaa’s figure becomes politically interesting: through his roles as Minister Delegate for the Budget and federation president, he already combines a large part of the skills that this transversal governance requires.
The “Manager” as a New Figure of Moroccan Power
Contemporary politics is increasingly shaped by a managerial logic. Voters demand not only doctrines but, increasingly, concrete results: infrastructure, growth, jobs, health, education, transport, administrative efficiency, and improved public services. This evolution favours profiles able to present themselves as “problem-solvers” rather than as bearers of an ideological vision. In the Moroccan case, it meets an older tradition of state technocratisation.
The Moroccan political system nonetheless remains deeply structured by the centrality of the monarchy. Specialised literature has long emphasised the weight of the royal institution in defining political equilibria and its capacity to structure the partisan space through what Daadaoui (2010) describes as “rituals of power”: electoral and institutional arrangements that organise partisan competition while preserving monarchical pre-eminence. El Bouchikhi (2018), in a complementary perspective devoted to the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, shows that Moroccan parties structurally operate within an asymmetrical relationship with the monarchy, in which their capacity for action remains subordinate to their position within a broader political order.
This reading connects with a broader analysis of Morocco’s institutional trajectory since 2011, according to which the formal expansion of governmental and party prerogatives has been accompanied by an ongoing recomposition of the real balance of power, without challenging the monarchy’s centrality in final arbitration (Chtatou, 2026, 27 May). This feature helps explain why a profile like Lekjaa’s can acquire particular importance. He does not merely represent technocracy in the classic administrative sense. He embodies a form of performative technocracy — that is, a technocracy able to concretely demonstrate its results to the public.
In football, results are immediately visible and quantifiable: they are measured by qualifications, rankings, infrastructure built, club performances, competitions organised, and the capacity to secure major international events.
This visibility is politically valuable. The structural problem of classic technocrats is that they often suffer from a deficit of popular legitimacy: their authority rests on expertise recognised by peers, but rarely on emotional public support. Lekjaa, by contrast, has an exceptionally large popular capital for a technocrat. Football provides him with a direct bridge between administrative expertise and collective emotion — a bridge that Le Monde itself notes largely explains his popularity, with the Moroccan public judging him “on the performances of the Moroccan national football team more than on the country’s financial situation,” which he nonetheless manages as Budget Minister (Aublanc, 2026).
It is thus possible to speak of a hybridisation between technocracy and sporting populism — not in the classic ideological sense of populism, but in the sense of an ability to communicate with very broad audiences through a highly emotional and unifying domain. This communicative dimension is not unique to Lekjaa’s case: it extends a more general trait of Moroccan government, whose authority rests largely on a subtle interplay of symbolic capital, appeals to collective emotion, and strategic ambiguity in political communication (Chtatou, 2026, 12 March). This hybridisation is undoubtedly one of the most original traits of Lekjaa’s political profile compared with the technocrats who preceded him in successive Moroccan governments.
Why the 2030 World Cup Changes the Nature of the Political Calculation
The 2030 World Cup represents an event of a different nature from the major competitions previously organised in Morocco, such as the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations. It constitutes a long-term national project: FIFA plans a total of 101 matches across the entire competition, distributed among the various principal host countries, giving the event a considerable logistical, economic, and diplomatic scale (FIFA, 2026).
For Morocco, the stakes therefore extend well beyond football alone. The World Cup can accelerate rail, airport, and urban infrastructure; stimulate international tourism; strengthen economic attractiveness for investors; speed up the modernisation of stadiums and sporting facilities; develop cultural and creative industries; foster the creation of skilled jobs; strengthen connectivity between the Kingdom’s major cities; and increase Morocco’s diplomatic visibility on the world stage. It can also function as a structuring political deadline for the entire next governmental cycle.
A government taking office after the 23 September 2026 elections would thus have roughly four years to prepare for the 2030 deadline. The calendar is therefore almost perfectly aligned: elections in September 2026, formation of a new government in autumn 2026, intensive preparation of major projects between 2027 and 2030, and finally the actual organisation of the competition. It is this temporal coincidence that gives rise to the expression “World Cup 2030 government,” popularised by part of the Moroccan and international press following Lekjaa’s affiliation with PAM.
This expression does not necessarily mean that the future government would be composed exclusively around football. It rather designates a governmental team whose mandate would be strongly structured by the success of the major projects associated with the 2030 deadline. In this scenario, a man like Lekjaa has an obvious comparative advantage: he already knows the international interlocutors, the sporting institutions at continental and world level, the Iberian partners involved in co-hosting, and the precise organisational constraints tied to the event. As early as February 2025, the RMFF had already announced the creation of joint commissions to coordinate the efforts of Morocco, Spain, and Portugal in preparing the tournament — an institutional mechanism of which Lekjaa was one of the direct architects, alongside the Morocco 2030 Foundation and the professional leagues (Maroc.ma, 2026b). Football thus becomes, in this specific context, a genuine school of international governance for whoever leads it.
The Decisive Question: Can Sporting Success Be Converted into Governmental Success?
This is where the analysis must become more cautious. Running a sports federation and running a government are not equivalent functions. The RMFF is a sectoral organisation with a precise mission and a circumscribed scope of action. Government, by contrast, must manage contradictory interests, arbitrate between competing sectors, negotiate with organised social groups, respond to trade-union demands, manage cyclical economic crises, ensure the continuity of essential public services, and build lasting political compromises within a coalition.
An excellent manager of football does not therefore automatically become an excellent head of government. The reasoning that “whoever succeeded in football will succeed with the state” would constitute a category error that must be avoided. It would, however, also be wrong to minimise the transferable skills between the two worlds. Preparing a World Cup indeed requires certain capacities for inter-institutional coordination, diplomatic negotiation, multi-year budget management, and crisis communication that are directly relevant to governmental action.
The question, then, is not whether Lekjaa is capable of “playing the role of a Prime Minister” because he successfully leads national football, but rather whether his overall career demonstrates a proven capacity to manage complex organisations in highly constrained temporal and institutional environments. In this respect, his experience at the Ministry of Budget, where he has held the position of Minister Delegate since October 2021, is essential: it constitutes the administrative and financial counterpart to his action at the head of the RMFF.
The fact that he simultaneously holds a budgetary portfolio within government and leads the national federation creates a rather unusual hybrid profile in the Moroccan political landscape, combining public finance, administration, elite sport, and international diplomacy. This combination probably explains his recent political rise more than his sporting success alone, spectacular as it was in 2022. It is also this dual role — ministerial and federal — that critical coverage of his trajectory highlights, with some observers suggesting that his “parachuting” into a party “weakened by judicial scandals and in the midst of a leadership crisis” may have been facilitated by support extending beyond the party apparatus alone (Wikipedia, 2026, citing Aublanc, 2026).
PAM as a Vehicle of Transformation
Joining PAM must also be analysed from the party’s own point of view. PAM has historically been associated with a strategy of political modernisation and the pursuit of a new administrative and economic elite. Its trajectory fits into a Moroccan party landscape in which political formations periodically seek to renew their cadres and attract figures capable of transcending their traditional activist base.
Lekjaa’s entry corresponds perfectly to this logic of renewal. It allows PAM to present itself as the party of competence, management, and major national projects, at a moment when the party is positioning itself as the main challenger in the electoral race — Le360 (2026a) noting, in this regard, the “merciless duel” pitting it against the Istiqlal Party in several regions, notably those of the Sahara. The National Council of 25 July 2026 placed particular emphasis on openness to new competencies and on the party’s wish to place itself first in the elections (PAM, 2026a).
Lekjaa’s recruitment can therefore be read as a deliberate strategic repositioning. The party is not simply seeking additional votes: it is seeking a figure able to embody a credible promise of governmental performance. Tellingly, Lekjaa’s integration into PAM’s Political Bureau occurred in an almost automatic manner, under the party’s bylaws, which guarantee a seat on this senior executive body to any sitting minister who joins its ranks (Le360, 2026c) — Lekjaa, at this stage, being neither secretary-general of the party nor a member of its collegial presidency (Le360, 2026a).
In a political environment where trust in parties can be fragile, this strategy of co-opting outside profiles is electorally rational: a figure external to traditional partisan careers can appear more competent, more modern, and less bound by the internal disputes that regularly affect party structures. But this strategy carries a non-negligible structural risk: it can heighten the party’s dependence on a single individual. A solid political party should, in principle, be able to collectively produce public policies, cadres, programmes, and leaders. If its electoral appeal rests primarily on one providential individual, its organisational transformation necessarily remains incomplete and potentially reversible.
The “Lekjaa phenomenon” could therefore be either the starting point of a genuine political professionalisation of PAM, or, conversely, a further manifestation of the growing personalisation of Moroccan politics — a phenomenon the local press has not failed to comment on, noting, behind the unanimity displayed at the National Council, persistent “questions” about the real purpose of this affiliation (Le360, 2026a).
The “Establishment” Hypothesis: What Can Actually Be Demonstrated?
The claim that “the Moroccan establishment is preparing Lekjaa” for the premiership must be handled with great methodological caution. There are indirect indications that make the hypothesis politically intelligible. Several Moroccan and international media outlets have noted his rise, his entry into PAM, and his positioning weeks before the elections. Le Monde explicitly described Lekjaa as donning the “suit of a prime-ministerial contender” (Aublanc, 2026), while the French-language Wikipedia entry, citing that article, reports that some observers describe his affiliation as a “parachuting orchestrated by the royal palace” — a phrase that, even though it circulates in public debate, does not in itself constitute established factual proof.
No public source to date establishes an explicit royal decision or any advance “designation” of Lekjaa for the post of head of government. It is therefore necessary to rigorously distinguish three quite different levels of analysis. The first level is purely factual: Lekjaa joined PAM on 25 July 2026, a fact solidly documented by multiple concordant sources (Telquel, 2026; Médias24, 2026; Le360, 2026b, 2026c; Maroc Hebdo, 2026; Mountakhab, 2026). The second level is political: his affiliation considerably increases his objective capacity to enter the national electoral — and potentially governmental — arena. The third level is prospective: his profile could make him compatible with the office of head of government if the full set of required political and constitutional conditions were to be met.
Moving directly from the third level to the first — that is, presenting as settled an appointment that remains hypothetical — would be methodologically incorrect and would owe more to journalistic speculation than to rigorous political analysis. The existence of rumours about preparation by “the establishment” in no way constitutes proof of an actual decision, however intuitively plausible the hypothesis may be.
That said, within the Moroccan political system, it would also be naive to reduce political analysis to mere formal electoral mechanics. The specialised literature on Morocco consistently emphasises the structuring importance of the monarchy in organising elites, institutions, and party strategies (Daadaoui, 2010; El Bouchikhi, 2018; York, 2023). The right analytical question is therefore not “did the King personally choose Lekjaa?” — a question to which publicly available data simply do not allow an answer — but rather: does the Moroccan political system today produce structural incentives favourable to the emergence of profiles of Lekjaa’s type? The answer to this second, more modest but empirically better-grounded question, appears to be affirmative.
The Precedent of Political Technocratisation
Lekjaa’s evolution fits within a broader trend in contemporary Moroccan governance: the coexistence, within successive governments, of officials drawn from classic party politics with technocratic, administrative, economic, and professional profiles recruited for their sectoral expertise. Morocco has frequently mobilised technocratic competencies to lead sectors deemed strategic, a logic particularly visible in the economic, financial, industrial, and infrastructural fields over several decades.
Lekjaa’s case, however, differs markedly from this precedent because it adds a dimension of mass popularity largely unprecedented for a technocratic profile. He could thus represent the emergence of a new generation of technocrats that might be described as “popular technocrats” — profiles whose authority rests simultaneously on recognised technical expertise and on broad emotional support within public opinion.
This hybrid type of profile is particularly interesting in a context where public action must be able to produce both measurable concrete results and sufficiently broad social buy-in to legitimise the reforms undertaken. Football here plays the role of a common national language, transcending the regional, social, and generational divides that usually run through Moroccan society. It allows a figure of administrative background to acquire a popular visibility that classic technocrats generally lack, for want of comparable media exposure.
This dimension explains why the Atlas Lions’ success in 2022 had indirect but lasting political consequences. That historic sporting result created considerable emotional capital around the national team and its institutional leaders. Lekjaa became, on that occasion, one of the principal institutional representatives of this collective achievement, a position he has since consolidated through the successful organisation of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations on Moroccan soil. He thus possesses something many classic technocrats lack: a national story that voters can themselves tell, and with which they can emotionally identify.
Would a “World Cup Government” Really Be a Good Thing?
The expression “World Cup government” is rhetorically appealing, but it deserves scrutiny on the merits. A government organised around the 2030 objective could benefit from exceptional strategic coherence. The various ministries could be mobilised around a shared, binding timetable covering infrastructure, tourism, transport, urban planning, security, culture, the environment, and the digital economy. The World Cup could thus become a powerful catalyst for administrative reform, comparable to the momentum generated by other recent major international events organised by the Kingdom, such as the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.
But the opposite is equally possible, and this is where the main risk of this configuration lies. A government overly focused on the tournament’s media success could favour visible infrastructure at the expense of less spectacular but equally essential social needs. Building stadiums, roads, and tourist facilities produces images that are immediately marketable on the international stage, whereas structural reform of schools, health care, or public administration requires years of sustained effort and, by its very nature, produces far less immediate international visibility.
The real test of a potential “World Cup government” would therefore be its ability to use the 2030 deadline as a genuine lever for structural development, rather than as a mere temporary international showcase. International experience with sporting mega-events consistently shows that their lasting impact depends closely on the quality of governance put in place, the rigour of upstream planning, and, above all, the effective use of infrastructure built after the event itself has ended. The World Cup should therefore not be seen as an end in itself, but as a structuring deadline around which a broader, more durable national development strategy could be organised.
For Morocco, the fundamental medium-term question is the following: what will concretely remain of the World Cup in 2031, once the event is over and international media attention has faded? If the answer is limited to modern but under-used stadiums, the lasting political and economic effect would necessarily be limited. If, on the other hand, the answer includes better national mobility, durably improved rail infrastructure, better-connected cities, a lastingly strengthened tourism sector, a more efficient public administration, a competitive national sports industry, more skilled jobs created, and better economic integration within the Euro-Mediterranean space, then the 2030 deadline could indeed constitute a historic turning point for the Kingdom’s development trajectory.
The Limits of the “Lekjaa Model”
The first identifiable risk is that of excessive personalisation of power. If the entire national development strategy were to be identified with a single individual, that individual’s eventual failure could quickly become the failure of the entire collective project he is meant to embody. This fragility is structural to any heavily personalised model of governance, regardless of the individual’s own qualities.
The second risk is the confusion between sharp sectoral expertise and general political competence. Public policy cannot, by definition, be reduced to the mere management of technical projects, however complex. It also necessarily involves essential dimensions of social justice, resource redistribution, democratic representation of different social groups, ongoing political negotiation, and renewed democratic legitimacy.
The third risk is that of a deficit in party grassroots implantation. Lekjaa is entering electoral politics relatively late in his career. Within the particularly tight timeframe before the September 2026 ballot, he must therefore build genuine local electoral roots, a lasting activist culture within the party, and the capacity to produce a complete political programme going beyond the sole register of major infrastructure projects.
The fourth risk is directly tied to the level of public expectations he has raised. The higher the expectations placed on a man publicly presented as a “super-manager” capable of resolving the country’s structural problems, the more the social and media tolerance for error mechanically decreases, potentially exposing Lekjaa to rapid political wear in the event of difficulties.
The fifth risk concerns more specifically the governance of football itself and the question of separation of functions. The prolonged coexistence of senior political functions and senior sporting leadership functions necessarily raises legitimate questions of separation of responsibilities and institutional governance, even in the absence of any formally established conflict of interest to date. The lasting credibility of both sporting and political institutions indeed requires that respective responsibilities be clearly delineated and perceived as such by public opinion.
The 2026 Election as the Real Test
Fouzi Lekjaa’s first real test will not be the 2030 deadline, but rather that of 2026. The electoral calendar is now officially set: elections for the members of the House of Representatives will take place on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, with an official campaign scheduled from 10 to 22 September (Maroc.ma, 2026a).
The stakes of this ballot are twofold for Lekjaa and for the party welcoming him. First, Lekjaa will have to demonstrate that he possesses genuine electoral capacity of his own, distinct from his national media notoriety. His nationwide popularity in no way guarantees victory in a specific local constituency, where on-the-ground dynamics, established clientelist networks, and specific territorial issues play a decisive role. He will therefore have to convert his national notoriety into concrete electoral organisation, lasting territorial roots, and a credible, detailed political programme — it being noted that, at the time PAM published its list of candidates by constituency, his own candidacy in Berkane, his home town, had not yet been formally confirmed by the party (Médias24, 2026).
Second, PAM itself will have to demonstrate that it can turn Lekjaa’s arrival into genuinely collective momentum, rather than a mere communication operation centred on an isolated figure. If PAM finishes first in the 23 September ballot, the hypothesis of Lekjaa acceding to the premiership will become politically far more serious and far more probable. If, on the other hand, PAM finishes behind another party at the end of the vote, Article 47 of the Constitution will then become the principal legal constraint against any claim by Lekjaa to the premiership, whatever his personal popularity may otherwise be.
It is therefore premature, at this stage, to speak of governmental succession before the popular vote has even taken place. But it would be equally imprudent to regard Lekjaa’s entry into PAM as a secondary or purely anecdotal event. It constitutes, whatever the final outcome of the elections, a qualitatively significant change in Morocco’s political configuration as this major electoral deadline approaches.
Toward a New Generation of Moroccan Political Leadership?
The Lekjaa phenomenon could ultimately extend beyond his own person and his own individual trajectory. More broadly, it could signal the emergence of a new type of Moroccan political elite: leaders drawn mainly from public administration, private business, finance, economic diplomacy, elite sport, or major national projects, rather than from traditional party careers built over several decades of activism.
This evolution would correspond to a broader transformation of contemporary politics, observable in many national contexts beyond the Moroccan case alone. Citizens increasingly evaluate governments on their concrete ability to deliver tangible results rather than solely on the coherence of their ideological discourse. Politics is thus becoming, at least in part, a matter of effectively managing contemporary administrative and economic complexity.
From this perspective, Morocco may, in the years ahead, seek figures capable of simultaneously connecting the strategic vision carried by the monarchical institution, on-the-ground public administration, domestic and foreign private investment, major infrastructure projects, and the Kingdom’s international communication. Lekjaa possesses precisely several of these characteristics combined within a single individual career.
His professional background allows him to speak, at once, the language of public financial administration, that of elite sport, that of international institutions such as FIFA and the Confederation of African Football, and that of major national infrastructure projects. It is this rare versatility, even more than his popularity alone, that probably constitutes his main distinctive political capital in the current Moroccan context.
The Paradox: The More Apolitical Lekjaa Appears, the More Political He Becomes
There is, finally, a particularly interesting paradox worth highlighting to conclude this analysis. Lekjaa’s political strength stems partly from the fact that, until very recently, he was not perceived as a traditional politician in the classic sense of the term. In the eyes of public opinion, he could appear essentially as a competent professional, an effective manager, a man of concrete results rather than of partisan discourse.
His formal entry into PAM necessarily changes this collective perception. From now on, each of his public decisions can be read through an explicitly political lens, which was not systematically the case before, when he mainly expressed himself as a sports leader or a technical budget official.
This transformation will be particularly decisive during the electoral campaign, which formally opens on 10 September 2026. His public discourse will necessarily have to evolve, moving from the register of football to that of general public power, from sporting performance to concrete social policy, from sports infrastructure to everyday public services. He will have to demonstrate, before voters and observers alike, that he possesses a global vision of Morocco that extends well beyond the field of football and technical budget management alone.
If he succeeds in this, his move into electoral politics could become a genuine textbook case of the successful conversion of technocratic capital into lasting electoral capital, potentially inspiring other similar profiles in future electoral cycles. If, on the other hand, he fails to make this shift in register, his affiliation with PAM could, in retrospect, be interpreted as a mere opportunistic attempt to convert sporting popularity into political power, without any genuine underlying ideology or societal project.
Conclusion: The “World Cup Government” as Hypothesis, Not Yet as Reality
Fouzi Lekjaa’s entry into PAM undeniably marks a significant new stage in his personal and professional trajectory. It comes just weeks before the 23 September 2026 legislative elections, in a context where PAM openly claims the ambition of becoming the Kingdom’s leading parliamentary force at the end of the ballot (PAM, 2026a).
His profile appears exceptionally well suited to the particular historical moment Morocco is currently going through. It brings together three distinct forms of political capital: the technocratic capital of the experienced senior civil servant, the managerial capital of the internationally recognised sports leader, and the popular capital of the institutional official closely associated with the recent renaissance of Moroccan national football. To these three dimensions is now added, since 25 July 2026, a fourth: the properly political capital conferred by his formal party affiliation.
It is this unusual combination of four forms of capital that lends credibility, in the eyes of a significant part of public opinion and observers, to the hypothesis of a future accession by Lekjaa to the premiership. But one must firmly resist the temptation to turn a plausible political hypothesis into an already established fact. No publicly available evidence to date allows one to affirm with certainty that Lekjaa was formally designated or “prepared” in advance by the Moroccan establishment to become head of government. What is, however, empirically observable is a remarkable convergence between his individual professional career, the objective governance needs of contemporary Morocco, and the institutional calendar of the 2030 World Cup.
The timing is almost too perfect not to legitimately fuel political and media speculation: elections in September 2026, the opening of a new governmental cycle from autumn 2026, the programmed acceleration of major national projects through to 2030, and finally the actual organisation of the World Cup. In this specific context, the expression “World Cup 2030 government” carries genuine analytical value for the researcher, beyond its immediate journalistic dimension. It designates less a government personally led by Lekjaa than a more general model of governance, centred on rigorous execution, inter-institutional coordination, major structuring projects, and the Kingdom’s increased international visibility.
Should Lekjaa indeed become Head of Government at the end of the electoral and constitutional process, his main challenge would then be to demonstrate that the qualities that made him an effective manager of Moroccan football can genuinely be transposed to the structural complexity of running the state. He would have to transform the logic of immediate sporting results into a logic of lasting public results: no longer merely winning matches, organising international competitions, and building sports infrastructure, but concretely improving schools, hospitals, employment, social justice, national economic competitiveness, and the overall quality of public services provided to Moroccan citizens.
It is precisely there, in this demanding transposition from one register to another, that the future of the “Lekjaa model” will truly be decided. The 2030 World Cup could provide him with a formidable political and symbolic platform. But it could just as easily become his greatest personal and political test, for organising a World Cup is one thing; governing a country while it simultaneously organises a World Cup is quite another.
The real political question of the coming months is therefore perhaps not, ultimately: “Will Fouzi Lekjaa become Morocco’s next Prime Minister?” It is deeper, and concerns the entire national political system: is Morocco moving from a generation of leaders primarily defined by their historical political affiliation to a generation in which managerial competence, concrete execution capacity, and the successful management of major projects themselves become autonomous and sufficient sources of political legitimacy? If this is indeed the case, Lekjaa could be not only a credible potential candidate for the premiership, but also the precursor symbol of a deeper transformation of the Moroccan ruling elite as a whole. The 2030 World Cup would then be not simply another sporting competition: it could become the institutional backdrop for a new phase of contemporary Moroccan governance.
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About Dr. Mohamed Chtatou
Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.
View all posts by Dr. Mohamed Chtatou →
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