About the Moroccan national team – Written by / Badr Eddine Idrissi
With six goals against the Republic of Congo, in a match for the third round of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, the Moroccan national team ended its last sports season, which had a bad harvest, the collapse of the African dream there on the Ivory Coast, where the scene of the 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations was dominated by the Ivorian Elephants, which brought it back to life other than the Atlas Lions, and among its frightening indicators was a performance that lacked fluidity in many confrontations and even matching individual possibilities, before the Congo match raised some reproach to coach Walid Regragui at the end of the road.
The national team then returns to occupy our football scene with many questions, about the degree of development in collective performance after it had relatively gotten rid of its World Cup cloak, and about the echo of the six goals against the Republic of Congo, in the philosophy of play, and about Walid’s ability to melt what remained of the ice of doubt and suspicion in his ability to give us the beautiful face of this national team. Certainly, the entry into a new football season for the Atlas Lions will not be friendly or experimental, even if the six matches they will play in a compressed manner during the three months of September, October and November are for the qualifiers for the 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, which Morocco will host in December of next year, and the Lions, due to the strength of the hosting, are qualified for its finals. There are burning areas in all these matches, which make them important and even strategic for the national team, including that winning all or most of them is an inevitability imposed by the national team’s need to remain at the top of the African teams’ rankings globally, and including that the tests, despite their varying strengths, represent connected links for Walid Regragui, in order to fortify the style of play against forms of dilution and suffocation, of which we have seen repeated images since returning from the Qatar World Cup. The start will be tomorrow, Friday, with a match against the Gabon national team, eager to win the only seat granted to the Lions’ group. With the differences in the structure of this team, which has been a terrible headache for us in recent years, and even caused us setbacks and eliminations, the test appears strong and deserves to be a test for the national team and Walid, to ensure that the six-goal series that concluded last season was not a summer cloud that has dissipated. What we had recorded about the national team’s performance in a regressive manner in the Zambia match, which we won by two goals to one, is that the collective performance lacked fluidity and was suffocated, and in particular, lacked offensive solutions. The match against the Republic of Congo was an actual exit from that frightening tunnel, as the offensive structure rose, the offensive effectiveness increased, and the performance seemed harmonious and balanced. Therefore, we will be keen to know whether the national team will maintain the same offensive content, especially since the Lions come to the Gabon and Lesotho matches without injuries and with high levels of readiness. While keen to maintain cohesion and harmony by renewing confidence in human constants, Walid Regragui will need a great imagination to envision alternative scenarios in the event that the machine breaks down for this reason or that, so the big question arises: Will the national team start the Gabon match with the same formation that defeated the Republic of Congo last June by six goals? In the end, this is not what matters, but what is more important is that Walid succeeds in investing the human capital that he enjoys, unlike all the teams on the continent, so that the team gains the tactical identity that keeps it in the lead, and strengthens its chances of winning the continental bet, the bet of winning the African title.
