A striking admission from Regragui about Morocco’s miracle at the Qatar World Cup

Walid Regragui has lifted the lid on his historic run with Morocco at the 2022 World Cup, retracing the challenges that greeted him from the moment he took charge only months before the tournament, the ambitions he carried into it, and the semi-final finish that stands as the greatest feat in the history of Moroccan and African football.

The former Atlas Lions boss insists his side did not travel to Qatar chasing an honourable exit. They believed they could go toe to toe with the game’s heavyweights, and Regragui reckons the real triumph of that campaign was rewiring how everyone thought.

“When the Royal Moroccan Football Federation offered me the job of coaching the national team, I said I would not accept the task if the goal was merely to participate,” Regragui told Moroccan website Al-Botola. “Morocco should not go to the World Cup just to be present, but to be a team capable of competing. And when I saw the quality of the players, I became convinced that we could achieve something big.”

Time was the enemy. With roughly three months on the clock before the World Cup, Regragui had a mountain to climb. “We had to bring some players back, build the team’s identity, put in place the tactical ideas, and form the technical staff, all in record time,” he said.

The starting point: writing Africa’s history

That opening fixture against Croatia proved the cornerstone of everything that followed, and avoiding defeat handed the players a huge lift.

“We knew that not losing the first match would be very important,” he added. “After that encounter, the players gained great confidence, then the win over Belgium came to give us greater belief in our ability to go far.”

Reaching the second round was never the ceiling for Regragui. It was the launchpad. “After qualifying from the group stage, I told the players that the time had come to enter Morocco’s history by eliminating Spain,” he said. “And after beating them, our goal became to write Africa’s history by qualifying for the semi-final at Portugal’s expense.”

He went on: “I felt that we were living a historic moment, and I asked the players to realise that they represented a generation that would remain in the memory of Moroccans and Africans. This feeling gave us added strength.”

The start of a project, not its end

Nor did the semi-final satisfy him. Regragui and his players walked out against France believing they could reach the final. “After eliminating Spain and Portugal, we were not thinking of stopping,” he explained. “We genuinely believed in the possibility of winning the World Cup, and that is why we entered the France match with the same ambition.”

They fell to the French, yet Regragui frames Qatar as a genuine turning point for Moroccan football. “After returning to Morocco, we began to think about what we were missing to become a team that consistently competes at the highest level, because reaching the semi-final should be a beginning and not an end,” he said.

For Regragui, the deepest legacy of that World Cup runs beyond the scoreline. It lies in the change of mentality it triggered inside the squad and across the Moroccan support.

“What makes me happiest is that we changed the mindset of the players and the fans,” he said. “In the past, talking about winning the World Cup seemed impossible, but today Moroccans have come to believe that their team is capable of achieving this dream, and that is the greatest victory for me.”