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Walid Regragui, Morocco coach, “wants people who are sure they want to wet the shirt” for the country

Franc. Humble. Precise. When a coach likes to talk about football, and this kind of personality does not rush to the doors of the newsrooms, you have to listen to him. Especially when he reached a World Cup semi-final at the head of a team that was not expected at this stage of the competition.

Monday January 30 at 10 p.m., at the microphone of “After foot” on RMC, Walid Regragui, 47, the conductor of the Atlas Lions, returned for an hour to the course of his players at the World Cup. in Qatar in November and December 2022. The World Africa spent the evening behind the scenes of this radio show whose podcast is the most listened to in France.

Before the Moroccans, never an African team had reached the last four in the World Cup. When journalists Gilbert Brisbois or Daniel Riolo ask the coach about this performance, Walid Regragui talks about it as obvious. “The speech from the start was ‘We’re not going there to play three matches'” (which correspond to the group stage), if a player thought otherwise, he only had to ” rest[r] at home “.

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The workforce, underlines the coach, has real talents, such as Achraf Hakimi (Paris-Saint-Germain, PSG), Noussair Mazraoui (Bayern Munich) or Yassine Bounou (Sevilla). “Casing nothing, with this equipment, you don’t have a team that must necessarily be afraid. We have superior teams on paper; but on a match, I think that with these players, we have the right to be ambitious “explains the coach at the microphone.

“I was in commando operation”

There is nothing pretentious in these remarks. Walid Regragui knows what he wants and he knows what he says. Not one word higher than the other. Thus, when he was appointed coach of Morocco after the ousting of Vahid Halilhodzic – three months before the start of the tournament – he had to reconnect with a key player: Hakim Ziyech (Chelsea), banned from the team by the former coach. “At the beginning, it was complicatedhe says. I explained to him what I expected of him (…) I said “I am going there to make history: either you come and do it with me or I will do it without you.” And then he understood. We went to do it together, but I knew that without him, I wouldn’t do it anyway. »

The Moroccan has heard criticism of the game of his team developed during the World Cup, sometimes too defensive. Pragmatic, he answers: “As I was in commando operation, I was only three months old, I had to go to the most urgent. And the most urgent and easiest thing for a coach is to know how to defend. To have an offensive animation, it takes time. »

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