In August 2022, three months before the World Cup in Qatar, the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) bet on dismissing Bosnian coach Vahid Halilhodzic to replace him with Walid Regragui. The former Moroccan international had just won the national championship and the African Champions League with Wydad Casablanca, but the choice could seem risky so close to the deadline for the World Cup, where the Atlas Lions were to face in the first round. Belgium, Croatia and Canada.
Ten months later, the record of Walid Regragui and his players has far exceeded expectations and thwarted all predictions. The Moroccans finished in fourth place in the World Cup, which no African selection had achieved in the final phase. To reinforce the level of its performance, it eliminated Belgium in the first round, Spain (0-0, 3-0 on pens) then Portugal (1-0), before falling in the semi-final against the France (0-2).
This remarkable success, Morocco owes it in part to some of its leaders like Yassine Bounou, Achraf Hakimi, Romain Saïss, Nayef Aguerd, Hakim Ziyech or Youssef En-Nesyri, but also to its young and charismatic 47-year-old coach. One of his first decisions was to meet Hakim Ziyech, Noussair Mazraoui and Abderrazak Hamed-Allah, who were at odds with the former coach, and then convince them to play for their country again.
“A big hard worker”
Hamza El Hajoui, president of Fath Union Sports in Rabat, where Walid Regragui began his coaching career in 2014, believes that the latter’s share of responsibility is essential to explain the results of the selection. “He had little time to prepare for the World Cup, but he is a hard worker, passionate, who has ideas and a form of management allowing him to get players to join his project. He is someone open, accessible, and his arrival has created an obvious dynamic, because he knows how to convey his ambition. »
In a few weeks, thanks to friendly matches played before the World Cup, “the coach knew how to give a style of play to his team, well organized, solid defensively but who knows how to exploit his technical qualities, and also very strong mentally”intervenes Mustapha El Haddaoui, who had reached the round of 16 at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico with the Moroccan Lions.
The 2022-2023 season of Morocco, which Khalid Fouhami, the former goalkeeper and teammate of Walid Regragui in the national team qualifies “of the most successful in the history of the selection”, was also marked by a qualification for the African Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire (from January 13 to February 11, 2024) and by a prestigious success against Brazil (2-1) in a friendly match on March 25 in Tangier.
“I think the course in Qatar is no coincidence, the victory against Brazil being further proof. Morocco has reached a milestone in Qatar, many binational players want to play for him, when it was not so much the case not so long ago. But we must not lose sight that in football, everything can go very quickly and that it is always difficult to manage the periods which follow the big performances, he points out.
In Africa, Morocco have become the team to beat
The month of June was indeed more complicated than expected for Morocco, first hung in Rabat by Cape Verde in a friendly match (0-0, June 12), then beaten (1-2) in South Africa five days later, in qualifying for the CAN. These two underperformances, admittedly without major consequences, gave Walid Regragui the opportunity to test new game options, but also to give his players a wake-up call.
“The coach was not satisfied and he said so. Because he knows that facing Belgium, Spain and Portugal in the World Cup, where you have to defend well, and Brazil in a friendly, is not the same thing as playing against African teams sometimes on difficult lawns, in the heat »says Khaled Fouhami.
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The Atlas Lions’ last two games and those to come in the coming months, including the start of 2026 World Cup qualifying in November and the AFCON finals, will be important tests. “Morocco will be one of the favorites of the CAN with Senegal, forecast Khaled Fouhami. He will be, with his status as a semi-finalist of the World Cup, the team to beat, and it is on these occasions that he will have to use this mental force which allowed him to go so far in Qatar. . »