Walid Regragui given speedy agenda to get Morocco ready for World Cup

RIYADH: Of the four Arab teams at the World Cup, Asia’s pair Saudi Arabia and Qatar have head coaches from France and Spain, respectively.

Africa has a different approach and has gone local with Tunisia having Jalel Kadri and, last week, Morocco appointing Walid Regragui to take control of the team less than three months from the start of the World Cup in November.

There is not much time before the tests against Croatia, Belgium, and Canada but fans are, for the moment at least, feeling much happier.

The appointment hardly came as a surprise and was expected ever since Vahid Halilhodzic was fired in August. Spare a thought for the Bosnian boss as he became the first to successfully lead three teams to a World Cup only to be fired before the tournament started.

Ivory Coast pulled the trigger in 2010 after a poor performance at the Africa Cup of Nations. Japan did the same in 2018 after Halilhodzic’s relationships with certain players broke down, and in the case of Morocco it was a combination of the two, though more of the latter.

Falling out with star player Hakim Ziyech cost the man who led Algeria to the knockout stages of the 2014 World Cup, the chance to go to Qatar.

In September last year, Halilhodzic dropped the Chelsea attacker saying that he had feigned injury to avoid being called up to face Ghana in June 2021.

Halidhozic said: “For the first time in my coaching career, I have seen behavior that disappoints me. A player who refuses to play a game, admittedly a friendly, on the pretext that he is injured.” The coach also dropped Ajax, now Bayern Munich, full-back Noussair Mazraoui.

Had results been better perhaps the outcome could have been different.

Morocco may have qualified for the World Cup in