Morocco’s Regragui Fires Back: 74 Goals in 37 Matches Debunks ’Defensive Coach’ Label

During a meeting organized this Thursday with the media, national team coach Walid Regragui delivered a critical analysis of the media’s treatment of his work, calling for a change of course and a sacred union in view of the next Africa Cup of Nations.

He first confronted the image of a defensive coach that is often associated with him, considering it unrepresentative of the facts. To support his argument, he opposed precise statistics to what he considers to be preconceived ideas: "I did not present my record during the last press conference ’to show off’, but because you never highlight the positive points or the quantified performances that I have accomplished with the national team. And to deconstruct the idea that I am a defensive coach, even though I have scored 74 goals in 37 matches since taking office, an average of 2 goals per match, with a ball possession rate of 60%."

This criticism of his quantified record is, according to him, part of a more general "lack of equity" that he felt compelled to denounce. To illustrate this feeling, he made a direct comparison between two eliminations in the Africa Cup of Nations, highlighting a difference in the treatment of responsibilities: "When in 2019, Morocco was eliminated from the Africa Cup of Nations by Benin [...], everyone criticized Hakim Ziyech for missing a penalty. Me, on the other hand, I was the target of all the criticism after the elimination of the last CAN, while Hakimi also missed a penalty."

Beyond this specific example, the coach highlighted what he perceives as a contradiction in the media narratives. He thus paralleled the reproach made to him of talking too much about the 2022 World Cup and the focus of some on the failure of the last CAN: "Just as I am sometimes reproached for still living in the dream of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, I also reproach some media for not turning the page on the elimination in South Africa during the last CAN, even though this episode dates back more than a year and a half."

Faced with what he describes as an environment not conducive to performance, Walid Regragui concluded by refocusing all his criticisms on the supreme objective. He recalled that only the union of all forces would allow the conquest of a title that "has eluded Moroccan football for 50 years", his intervention ending with a plea for an overall vision: "We will never be able to erase from the memory of Moroccans the historic qualification for the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup [...]. Before criticizing the level of the Moroccan national team, we must also take into account the circumstances in which we evolve, in particular the injuries and absences in several training camps."