Ammon News - Yassine Bounou, the Morocco goalkeeper, described Tuesday's collision with Spain for a place in the last eight of the World Cup as “just like a derby.”

And Bounou knows derbies. His adopted hometown, Seville, is home of one of football’s noisiest, most fiery local grudges, the Andalusian rivalry between his Sevilla and city rivals Real Betis.

Spain and Morocco, nations separated by a short stretch of water, and in some places simply by a high, fortified fence, anticipate today’s contest sounding like a neighbourhood derby but one in which one team are playing at home, for all the distance of the Education City stadium in Doha from Madrid or Rabat.

Five thousand extra tickets for Morocco fans, who have travelled in numbers to Qatar, have been released. With local Gulf support likely to sway in favour of the Atlas Lions, Spain fans may be outshouted by as much as eight voices to each one of theirs in the grandstands.

The neighbourliness will be felt vividly on the pitch and the touchline. The distance from Andalucia’s southern tip to Morocco’s northernmost harbour is barely 10 kilometres at the narrowest point of the Strait of Gibraltar while for the family of Walid Regragui, the coach plotting to take Morocco into the quarter-finals for a World Cup for the first time in their history, the Spanish frontier is merely a drive away.

Regragui, though born in France, grew up regarding his parents’ native Fnideq as his other home. It is very close to the enclave of Ceuta, one of two coastal territories on the African mainland governed by Spain.

Regragui played professionally in Spain’s Liga, with top-division Racing Santander in the mid 2000s, an experience that engendered a respect for what he regards as a distinct, faithful football style.

“I love that country’s football culture,” Regragui told reporters on Monday. “It’s been the same for 20 years and it’s brought great dividends. But we are also developing our game, and we’ll have to adapt our qualities to make problems for Spain.”