Dietmar Hamann says Morocco "brought the human side" back to the World Cup after their remarkable journey in the tournament was ended by France on Wednesday night.
Walid Regragui's men have arguably been the team of the tournament, beating Spain and Portugal before pushing the French all the way in the last four.
They will now go into a play-off for third place with Croatia on Saturday, with RTÉ Soccer analyst Hamann full of praise for the way they've performed in Qatar.
"I think they, in a way, brought the human side back to this World Cup," he said.
"You talk about these superstars, top players, top earners, and if you think that one of the greatest players probably left the scene a week ago, Ronaldo, he couldn't even congratulate them at the end of the game [after Morocco had beaten Portugal].
"They won that game, they've done something historic, and he didn't even have the dignity to congratulate them for what they've achieved. Now you watch them, how they shake hands with the French, the dignity, the graciousness they show in defeat... brilliant."
Meanwhile Regragui has said Morocco will leave Qatar disappointed but filled with pride at having written their names into the history books by becoming the first African team to reach the World Cup semi-finals.
"We realise that we made a great achievement already," Regragui told reporters. "We know that the media, social media, and on TV, we saw the pictures, and we saw that everyone was proud of us in our country.
"We're disappointed for the Moroccan people tonight, we wanted to keep the dream alive. But we're pleased with what we've achieved. We felt that we could have even gone even further but these small details help real champions, which we saw tonight, of course."
Morocco, who came into the match with the best defensive record in the tournament, conceded from France's first serious attack five minutes into the game.
"Today, if I have regrets, it's the start of the game," Regragui added.
"We started quite poorly and we conceded a goal very quickly and that made the difference.
"They allowed us to have quite a lot of possession, but we made too many mistakes to cause them problems.
"But I think physically, we came up short tonight. We had too many players who were 60% or 70%, and have been for a few games now.
"My players gave everything and they've gone as far as they could. I really wanted to rewrite the history books, but you can't win a World Cup with miracles, you need to do it through hard work. And that's what we're going to do."
Additional reporting: Reuters
