Not the same tournament, but the same goal? Monday evening despite Morocco’s qualification for the quarter-finals of CAN 2025, Walid Regragui was once again questioned about the quality of the game deployed by the Atlas Lions since the start of the tournament. Coming out of this narrow victory against Tanzania (1-0) in the round of 16, the Moroccan coach used the performance of the French team at the 1998 World Cup to defend himself against criticism.
“I told you that we were going to suffer until the last minute and we suffered until the last minute,” Regragui began at a press conference. But for him, these difficulties observed since the start of the African Cup of Nations do not prevent a selection from going to the end. Like Aimé Jacquet’s Blues at home at the end of the last century.
“I grew up in France”
“I always remember because I grew up in France. 1998, when they won the World Cup in France, in the round of 16, they won with a golden goal against Paraguay, in the quarter-finals they qualified on penalties and in the semi-finals, they were down 1-0 against Croatia and it was their right back who had never scored a goal in his life who scored two goals,” recalled the Moroccan coach, without quoting Lilian Thuram.
He was careful not to mention the final demonstration of Zinédine Zidane’s band against Brazil (3-0). He preferred to rely on the more chaotic course of the rounds which guided the French towards this final stage. “These are scenarios that we need to learn when we want to grow as a team that wants to win the CAN. And there is a team that is still in the running that knows perfectly how to win the CAN like that,” he explained in reference to the Egyptian game.
