Morocco’s National Soccer Coach Warns of COVID-19 Threat to Africa from Paris Lockdown

"If the continent is affected, it will be the worst thing," warned the head of the Moroccan technical staff, in a statement to the daily Le Parisien.

Having experienced worse than confinement, in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the tragedy of the former Yugoslavia, coach Halilhodzic has found the trick: to minimize the current situation and laugh about it with his loved ones. He tells the daily about his misadventure experienced thirty years ago. According to the coach, when he was still in Mostar, as sports director of the local club, the city was being bombed.

"All activities were at a standstill. I could no longer work. Sarajevo and Mostar were surrounded and blocked by the belligerents... But we were shelled day and night; there were battles in the streets with people in balaclavas. So I can’t make a comparison with the current ordeal," the Atlas Lions coach confided.

Confined at home, Vahid Halilhodzic was content to walk in the garden, and this for almost two consecutive years. The Franco-Bosnian also confesses to having narrowly escaped death, after criticizing the fascist Croats during a radio broadcast. "I received a call from a friend who asked me to hide because I was going to be targeted. At 10 past midnight, my house was targeted for 45 minutes. I hid at the back of my basement," he recalls.