The golden statue was already in his hands, the confetti raining down, and the entire Salle des Ministres at the CAF Awards 2025 was on its feet roaring his name. Achraf Hakimi, 27, fresh off another imperious season with Paris Saint-Germain and the driving force behind Morocco’s historic 2026 World Cup qualification, had just been named African Footballer of the Year for the second time in three years. The room belonged to him.

Then he looked to his right, spotted the tiny woman in the emerald-green hijab and matching caftan, and everything crumbled.

Achraf dropped the trophy on the table, covered his face with both hands, and sobbed like a little boy who had just found his mother in a crowded souk. Cameras zoomed in. The host froze mid-sentence. And Saida Mouh, the cleaning lady from the Madrid suburb of Getafe who raised three children alone while scrubbing floors at dawn, simply opened her arms. Her son fell into them in front of the entire continent.

“I owe everything, everything, to this woman beside me,” Hakimi managed between gasps, voice cracking over the microphone. “Every goal, every trophy, every minute on the pitch… it’s because she never missed a single second of my life.”

And she really never has.

Rewind to May 2017. A 19-year-old Hakimi is on the bench at the Santiago Bernabéu for the Champions League final. Real Madrid vs Juventus. Zidane throws him on in the 90th minute. As he jogs past the tunnel, the camera catches a woman in the stands jumping so hard her hijab nearly slips—Saida, who had taken three buses and a train from Getafe that morning because flights were too expensive.

Jump to December 2022. Morocco are 120 seconds from eliminating Spain in the World Cup quarter-final. Hakimi steps up for the decisive penalty. Before he places the ball, he glances up to the family section in Education City Stadium. Saida is on her feet, palms pressed together in duaa, mouthing the same prayer she whispered before every youth game in Madrid. He kisses the turf, chips it Panenka-style, and sprints straight to point at her. The image of Saida collapsing into her daughter’s arms became the defining photo of Morocco’s miracle run.

AFCON 2024 in Côte d’Ivoire? She was there for every match, sitting in the same seat behind the bench, wrapped in a Morocco flag, eating dates from a plastic bag she brought from home because “hotel food is too salty.” When Hakimi curled in that 90th-minute free-kick against South Africa to send the Atlas Lions to the final, he ran to the touchline, pressed his fingers to his lips, and blew a kiss upward—directly to the woman who still calls him “Habibi” on live television.

She has never missed a final. Not the Champions League in 2018 with Real Madrid. Not the 2021 UEFA Super Cup with Inter. Not the 2024 Coupe de France with PSG. Not even the 2022 Intercontinental Derby in Doha when PSG played a friendly against Al-Hilal and she flew 22 hours with two layovers just to watch 45 minutes. “If my son is on the pitch, I have to be in the stands,” she once told Moroccan TV with a shrug, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Back in Marrakech last night, the CAF president tried to move the ceremony along. Achraf wasn’t having it. He pulled Saida onto the stage himself—protocol be damned—grabbed the microphone, and let the tears flow freely.

“She woke up at 4 a.m. to clean offices so I could train. She carried my boots in a plastic bag on the metro because we couldn’t afford a car. When I left home at 16 for Dortmund, she cried for days but told me, ‘Go, my lion. Allah will protect you, and I will always be behind you—even if it’s from 3,000 kilometres away.’”

The audience—legends like Samuel Eto’o, Yaya Touré, and Didier Drogba—stood in ovation. Victor Osimhen, last year’s winner who finished runner-up again, walked over and kissed Saida’s hand. Even the normally stoic Hervé Renard was spotted wiping his eyes.

Saida, ever the quiet force, took the mic for exactly twelve seconds. In Darija that needed no translation, she said: “Achraf is Africa’s son tonight, but he will always be my little boy first. Thank you for loving him the way I do.”

The clip has already hit 25 million views across platforms. Moroccan state television replayed it on loop. In the Madrid neighbourhood of Las Margaritas where the Mouh family lived in a 60-square-metre flat, neighbours poured into the streets at 2 a.m. local time, waving flags and honking horns. Saida’s old cleaning clients—many of whom became like family—sent voice notes crying with pride.

Hakimi later posted a black-and-white photo of them on stage, his head buried in her shoulder. The caption, in Arabic and Spanish:

‎”أمي تاج راسي” “Mi madre, mi reina, mi todo.”

Rough translation: My mother is the crown on my head.

In an era of superstars with private jets and personal chefs, Achraf Hakimi’s greatest flex has always been the same: wherever he goes, whatever he wins, Saida Mouh is there—front row, plastic bag of dates in hand, praying louder than any ultras section on earth.

Last night Africa crowned its king. But everyone saw who really wears the crown in that family.

And for one beautiful, tear-soaked moment in Marrakech, football felt less like a sport and more like the purest love letter a son ever wrote to his mother—with the entire continent as witness.