Morocco World Cup Coach Halilhodzic’s Methods Questioned by Former Player

"He is endearing. He is a true football enthusiast. But in the day-to-day work, during training camps and training, it’s more than exhausting. He wants to take care of everything." Jérôme Rothen does not mince his words when asked to talk about Vahid Halilhodzic, his coach at PSG in the early 2000s, reports BFMTV.

This is not the first time that Vahid Halilhodzic has managed to qualify a national team for the World Cup. In 2010, he had qualified Ivory Coast for the World Cup, Algeria for the 2014 edition and Japan for the Russian edition in 2018. But his methods remain debatable. For example, the Ivorian Federation had fired him a few weeks before the World Cup. The same scenario was repeated in 2018 when he was fired from his position as Japan’s coach two months before the competition.

Will the scenario repeat itself with Morocco, especially since he is going through a difficult period marked by his quarrels with certain players including Hakim Ziyech, Noussair Mazraoui, Younès Belhanda, Nordin Amrabat and many others. Some supporters and even players continue to blame him for Morocco’s elimination in the quarter-finals of the last Africa Cup of Nations against Egypt.

For Jérôme Rothen, it’s all in the method. "He doesn’t trust his staff. With all the tools we have today, you can’t not trust the people on your staff. You can’t manage everything. You also have to be a good psychologist with the players. That’s everything Vahid isn’t."

For him, "Vahid Halilhodzic is stuck in the 90s, and it no longer works today. He is capable of depriving himself of one of his best players (Ziyech) for incompatibility of mood. And then he doesn’t even count his assistants. That’s the reality. His assistants are there to place the cones... When you are coached by this kind of character, you are tired," he said on RMC.