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Where do history makers come from? Walid Regragui's exploits are not a flash in the pan, the man understands excellence
Walid Regragui is a name that will never be forgotten as far as Moroccan and African football are concerned. He became the first African coach to manage a team in the quarterfinals of a World Cup and the first manager of any descent to take an African team to the semifinals of the World Cup.
Yet, to the casual football fan, it seems like Mister Regragui has been conjured from thin air with no prior sightings before he turned up in Qatar in a giant killing mood.
But we know that human beings are not mood swings, so they do not just come out of nowhere. They have a past, a history, and, most importantly, a beginning.
Walid Regragui: The Early days
Regragui’s story begins in France, where he was born.
He progressed through local leagues with his hometown club, AS Corbeil-Essonnes, and Racing Club de France Football before rising through the ranks and securing a spot in Toulouse, which was then in Ligue 2.
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After riding the waves of promotion and relegation with Toulouse, he moved to Ajaccio, who were crowned Ligue 2 champions in his first season with the Corsica-based club.
That season, Regragui played at right back and made 16 starts for the club as they secured promotion to the first division.
He spent two more seasons with Ajaccio, helping them escape relegation from Ligue 1 twice by the skin of their teeth, and it was there that his stock rose high enough for him to become a regular in the Moroccan national team.
Walid Regragui’s national team adventure
Although he had made his debut with the Atlas Lions in 2001, he only cemented his spot as the number one right back much later and was integral to the national team as they finished second in the 2004 African Cup of Nations.
Regragui started every game from the opening day's 1-0 defeat of Nigeria to the 2-1 loss to Tunisia in the final. He was only taken off once, in the semifinal, with the game already decided. That is how important he was to the squad at his peak.
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He also started all the matches when Morocco played at the 2006 AFCON, but they were far less successful as they crashed out in the group stage.
They were also unsuccessful with all three FIFA World Cup qualifying campaigns that Regragui was involved in, meaning that he never got to experience the World Cup as a player before retiring from the national team in 2009.
The end of Regragui’s playing career
After leaving Ajaccio in 2004, Regragui joined Racing Santander in Spain, but struggled to make any impact on the team as he was only a bit-part player for the La Liga side before going back to France with Dijon FCO in Ligue 2.
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After one season with Dijon, he moved to Grenoble in 2007, where he helped them win promotion to Ligue 1 for the first time since 1963.
After one season in the top division, Regragui moved to Morocco with Moghreb Tétouan, where he finally hung his boots.
Regragui’s Coaching career
Regragui retired at the age of 34 and joined Morocco’s coaching crew soon after, appearing on the bench and deputising for Rachid Taoussi, who was fired after less than a year after Morocco failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup and left the 2013 AFCON in the group stage yet again.
Taoussi was fired along with the rest of the coaching staff, and Regragui had to find new work. He took up the post of head coach at one of Morocco’s most traditional clubs, FUS Rabat, and it was here that he began to make a name for himself as one of the brightest minds in Moroccan football.
It took only one year to get his hands on his first piece of silverware, winning the Moroccan Throne Cup, the major cup competition in Morocco, with FUS.
Two years after this, he won FUS’ first and so far only league title with a two-point gap over defending champions Wydad Casablanca, a team that was destined to be in his future as well.
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Despite his successes, Regragui’s time with FUS ran out, and he left the club in 2020 for a short but eventful spell with Al Duhail in Qatar.
He won the Qatari Stars League in his first half-season with the club, having taken over the club midway through the season in first position anyway.
Unfortunately, Regragui’s time in Qatar was cut short after Al Duhail failed to progress past the group stage of the Asian Champions League, and a mutual termination of his contract was agreed upon.
Once again, Regragui found himself without a club to call home, and once again, he turned his attention to Morocco in 2021. This time, he joined Wydad, whom he had bullied out of a league title barely five years prior.
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He took to Wydad like a duck to water, winning the Moroccan Botola in his first season with the club and also winning the CAF Champions League by beating Al Ahly of Egypt, who were chasing their third title in a row.
Walid Regragui: The unifier, the legend
Wydad’s incredible Champions League win coincided with a time when the Moroccan national team was in distress.
They had been sent packing from the 2022 AFCON much earlier than expected and had more factions in the team and media than a war-torn country.
They badly needed a change, and Regragui, the steady climber who had taken Moroccan football by storm, was the perfect person for the job.
He helped mend the bridges between players who had left the national team prematurely and even let the country’s two best fullbacks, who both preferred the right side, come up with a solution that allowed both of them to play.
Which is why Noussair Mazraoui turns up on the left side of Morocco’s defence these days.
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He also quelled the beef between the country’s media and the foreign-born players, whom they believed could not represent Morocco with the same fire in their bellies as the players born in Morocco.
Being a French-born Moroccan himself, Regragui was the perfect person to show just how passionate foreign-born Moroccans could be about the national team, and so far he has not disappointed.
Players like Hakim Ziyech were reinstated in the squad, while others were scouted and integrated into a World Cup team that has 14 players born in foreign countries representing Morocco.
No other coach in African football history can boast of the accomplishments of Regragui’s Morocco, and even if they fall short of the ultimate prize in Qatar, his boys will have changed the ideas surrounding African football forever.
He says that what Morocco have done at the 2022 World Cup will inspire future African generations to dream more, and he is spot on about that.
When people talk about wanting to manage an African team at the World Cup, they will speak about wanting to do it like Walid Regragui, and when an African country eventually wins the World Cup, they can always look back and say he inspired them.
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