With fewer than 100 days until the World Cup kicks off on home soil, Morocco’s football federation must now rebuild momentum under a brand-new coach — and the clock is already ticking. There is something both poignant and deeply unsettling about the image of Walid Regragui sitting beside Fouzi Lekjaa at a late-night press conference in Rabat, fielding questions not about tactics or squad selection, but about the end of his tenure as Morocco’s national team coach. It was March 5, 2026 — 97 days before the World Cup was due to begin in the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and the man who had carried Morocco to the most glorious chapter in its football history was walking out of the door. The Atlas Lions, one of the tournament’s most eagerly anticipated sides, had just lost the person who made them roar.
Regragui, 50, spoke with the measured grace of a man who had thought carefully about his words. “The team needs a fresh face, a different energy, and a new perspective with a new coach,” he said. “I think the team needs a new lease of life before the World Cup, a new vision to continue progressing. My decision to leave is part of this team’s evolution.” It was a dignified exit, the kind that makes you wonder whether the real story is rather more complicated than the polished statement being delivered under television lights. When a coach resigns three months before a World Cup, citing the need for evolution, one suspects the pressures that brought him to that podium were anything but simple.
The Weight of Greatness
To understand the expectations that eventually crushed Regragui’s tenure, you have to go back to that extraordinary night in Al Thumama in December 2022, when Morocco defeated Portugal 1-0 to reach the World Cup semi-finals. No African nation had ever gone so far. No Arab country had ever stood on that stage. Youssef En-Nesyri’s soaring header became not just a goal but a symbol — of a continent long dismissed, of a nation finally arriving. Regragui, who had taken the job only weeks before the tournament began, was hailed as a tactical mastermind, a motivator of rare gifts, the man who had done what generations before him could not. The problem with miracles, of course, is that people start expecting them as a matter of course.
The 2022 semi-final loss to France — a 2-0 defeat against a side stacked with world-class talent — did nothing to diminish Regragui’s standing. Morocco had played with courage, structure and extraordinary collective spirit. But the years that followed told a harder story. At the Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast in early 2024, Morocco underperformed and were knocked out at the quarter-final stage by South Africa on penalties, a result that sent shockwaves through Moroccan football and produced the first sustained calls for the coach’s dismissal. Then came the Africa Cup of Nations on home soil in January 2026, a tournament Morocco had invested in heavily — not only financially, but emotionally and symbolically. The nation wanted a trophy. It did not get one. A 1-0 loss to Senegal in the final, a night that should have been a celebration, instead became a referendum on the coach’s future.
Tactical Questions and the Price of Pragmatism
Central to the criticism of Regragui was his playing style, or more precisely, his reluctance to embrace one. Morocco under his management were a deeply functional side — disciplined, compact, difficult to break down — but they were rarely a joy to watch. Their 2022 World Cup heroics were built on a fortress of a backline and lightning-fast transitions, a system that suited a team with pace, energy, and the element of surprise. By 2026, however, that surprise factor had long since evaporated. Opponents had studied Morocco meticulously. The defensive solidity that once felt unbreakable began, at moments, to feel limiting. The team’s gifted attacking players — Achraf Hakimi, Hakim Ziyech, Youssef En-Nesyri — were often shackled by an approach that prioritised not losing over the ambition to win with style.
The comparison with other African sides is instructive. Senegal, who beat Morocco in the AFCON final, play with a directness and dynamism that reflects their squad’s quality without sacrificing structure. Egypt, under various coaches, have long demonstrated that an African team can dominate possession and control matches at the highest level. Morocco, for all their enormous talent, were caught in a no-man’s land between the pragmatism that produced their greatest triumph and the ambition their federation and fanbase now demanded. When you are the co-host of the 2030 World Cup, when you are building a 115,000-capacity stadium that will be the largest football arena on earth, when billions are flowing into sports infrastructure, the expectation is not merely to compete — it is to dazzle.
An Untested Hand at the Wheel
The federation’s answer to the crisis — and it is, however diplomatically framed, a crisis — is Mohamed Ouahbi, a 49-year-old Belgian-Moroccan who most football fans outside of youth football circles would struggle to place. Ouahbi spent the formative years of his coaching career at Anderlecht, one of Belgium’s most storied clubs, guiding youth sides and developing the kind of technical, positional philosophy that the best European academies now insist upon. He then took charge of Morocco’s under-20 national team, steering them to the Youth World Cup title — a genuinely impressive feat that speaks to his ability to organise, motivate and tactically outthink opponents. But the under-20s World Cup is not the senior World Cup, and the gap
between those two stages of the game is not a step — it is a chasm.
Ouahbi was sanguine about the challenge when he addressed the media for the first time. “I’m not here to build, because the foundations are already in place. I’m here to keep performing,” he said, a statement that simultaneously acknowledges Regragui’s legacy and sidesteps the harder question of what “performing” means at a World Cup hosted on North American soil, with all of Morocco’s political and footballing ambitions riding on the result. His appointment of João Sacramento as assistant coach is a canny move: the Portuguese has worked under José Mourinho at Roma and Tottenham, and spent time at Paris Saint-Germain, bringing a depth of top-level European experience that Ouahbi himself currently lacks. The partnership will need to gel quickly. Morocco play World Cup warm-up games against Ecuador and Paraguay on March 27 and 31 respectively — precious, irreplaceable time to build rhythm and trust.
Group C and the Road Ahead
Morocco have been drawn in World Cup Group C alongside Brazil, Haiti and Scotland — a group that, on paper, offers a path to the knockout stages while also containing a Brazil side that, whatever their recent inconsistencies, remain one of world football’s eternal powers. A win against Scotland in the opener would set the tone. A draw against Brazil, managed well, could feel like a victory in itself. But all of this depends on a squad that must now adapt its game plan, its shape, its habits and its emotional bearings under a new coach in fewer than a hundred days. The psychological challenge of that adjustment should not be underestimated. Players who had built their understanding of the game around Regragui’s specific demands — his pressing triggers, his defensive lines, his set-piece routines — will need to rewire themselves fast.
And yet, there is something worth remembering as the panic and the headlines swirl. Achraf Hakimi, Morocco’s captain and one of the finest full-backs on the planet, called Regragui a “legend” on social media after the announcement, writing that his “leadership, passion, and vision inspired not only the players, but also an entire country and millions of fans around the world.” That legacy — the belief, the unity, the sense of collective purpose that carried a nation to a World Cup semi-final — does not evaporate overnight. Morocco is a squad full of players who know what it feels like to achieve the impossible. They have done it before under pressure, under scepticism, under the weight of a continent’s hopes. If Ouahbi can channel even a fraction of that spirit while adding the tactical flexibility and attacking ambition the moment demands, then Morocco will still arrive at this World Cup as one of its most compelling stories. The era of Walid Re
