SME-About Almountakhab Moroccan newspaper-Written by: Badr Al-Din Al-Idrisi
How many times must Mokwena come out to tell us, with courage that is based on his thoughts and convictions, that he is not afraid of dismissal, that he is continuing his work, and that like the Wydad fans, he does not sleep during defeats?
And how many times must Wydad president Hicham Ait Mena come out to tell us that discussing the future of Rulani Mokwena at the head of the technical staff of Wydad, just discussing that, is impossible and unacceptable, because the man has entered a very heavy workshop, and needs a lot of time and patience to lay the necessary foundations for the new Wydad edifice, and that the Wydad board of directors is confident of his success.
The fragility that has afflicted our clubs, our managers and even our fans, makes the margin of patience for defeats narrow, and whenever a loss closes in on Wydad, tweeters and influencers come out, asking and even inciting:
How long will Wydad be patient with Mokwena?
Wydad’s loss by four goals to Maghreb de Fes at Al-Arabi Al-Zawali, in the opening rounds of the second leg, was the heaviest defeat for the Red Knights this season, which increased the Wydad fans’ wounds, and even reduced the confidence in Mokwena’s ability to win the difficult sports bet he was invited to in his first experience outside South Africa. Anyone who casts his eyes to next summer, where Wydad will participate in the Club World Cup, in a terrifying group, consisting of Manchester City, Juventus and Al Ain of the Emirates, is shocked by the fact that the new or World Cup Wydad has not shown clear features, as whenever a light shines that says there is an end to the tunnel, darkness returns to cover in the near future. When analyzing the match against MAS Fez, which witnessed Wydad’s fourth loss this season, we can find justifications and excuses for the fall, the strongest of which was the expulsion of Ismail Benguetib, which condemned Wydad to play nearly 80 minutes with a missing player, and the most prominent of which is that Mokwena is not one of those coaches who turn their teams into buses that line up in front of the goal when defending the lead, as evidenced by the fact that he never thought of tightening the defensive belts, but rather all his substitutions were of an offensive nature. However, while we seek these excuses for Mokwena, it is appropriate for us and all Wydad fans to express our fear that all that we are seeing is just a false burden, and that the championship today has turned to the second leg, and Wydad has not given us a clear face, and the team has played a total of 16 matches under Mokwena’s command. We will see to what extent Hicham Ait Mena will withstand the severe setbacks, to triumph over his firm conviction that Mokwena is the man of the delicate stage that Wydad is going through, and that he has changed the features and even the technical features with the end and departure of an entire generation, the one that gave Wydad more titles, continental and local, than any generation before it..
And we will see the patience of Wydad fans, will they endure more violent shocks, and have previously been given evidence of support and backing for what Ait Mena has done, by appointing Mokwena as coach..
Between this and that, we hope that football will do justice to Wydad in its quest to make the dangerous transformation a success, which was destined to be by replacing one generation with another, in the season of preparation for a historic participation in the Club World Cup in its new building and form, and certainly if Mokwena succeeds in making the work of the change workshops a success, then the duo of Ait Mena and Mokwena will open a new era in the clubs’ management of their technical workshops, far from emotional and moody approaches or Which is forced by public pressure to make decisions that it does not like.
