Morocco’s Regragui Aims for African Cup After Historic World Cup Run

The Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) hired Walid Regragui as coach of the Atlas Lions to replace Franco-Bosnian Vahid Halilhodzic. The new coach was the former coach of Wydad Casablanca, a club that had just won the national championship and the African Champions League. Three months before the World Cup qualifying phase in Qatar, the bet was risky, but the FRMF trusted Regragui who was able to boost the morale of the players and restore cohesion within the team, allowing the Atlas Lions to finish first in their group with 7 points, after beating Belgium and Canada and drawing with Croatia.

In the round of 16, Morocco won their match against Spain (0-0, 3-0 on penalties), securing their ticket to the quarter-finals where they beat Portugal by the narrowest of margins (1-0), before losing in the semi-finals to France (0-2), recalls Le Monde Afrique. Considered an outsider at the start, Morocco defied all predictions to find themselves in the last four of the World Cup, a performance never before achieved by an African team. An exploit that the Moroccan team owes in large part to the charisma and leadership of coach Regragui who has built a strong and united team.

"He had little time to prepare for the World Cup, but he is a hard worker, a passionate person, with ideas and a form of management that allows him to get the players to adhere to his project. He is an open, accessible person, and his arrival has created an obvious dynamic, because he knows how to convey his ambition," confided Hamza El Hajoui, the president of Fath Union Sports de Rabat, where Walid Regragui made his debut as a coach in 2014. The 47-year-old coach "has been able to give his team a style of play, well organized, solid defensively but able to exploit its technical qualities, and also very strong mentally," adds Mustapha El Haddaoui, an Atlas Lion who had played in the round of 16 at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Khalid Fouhami, former goalkeeper and teammate of Walid Regragui on the national team, believes that this 2022-2023 season is "the most accomplished in the history of the national team" which, in addition to its historic World Cup run, has qualified for the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast and defeated Brazil (2-1) in a friendly match on March 25 in Tangier. But, he warns, "it is always difficult to manage the periods that follow big performances". As a premonition, Morocco fell in performance in June, drawing 0-0 against Cape Verde in a friendly and losing 1-2 to South Africa. All eyes are now on November when the 2026 World Cup qualifiers and the final phase of the 2024 CAN starting on January 13 will be played.