On the evening of January 18, in a stadium Morocco had spent years preparing to fill with triumph, coach Walid Regragui watched his team lose an Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final.
How things unfolded that night have been widely discussed: Senegal walked off protesting a penalty; when play resumed after a delay, Brahim Diaz chipped the ball straight to the Senegal goalkeeper from the said penalty; Senegal then got a winner.
What has perhaps not received much attention is what happened since then. Regragui had remained composed, speaking of the process and what lay ahead. But Moroccan journalists came with venom and agenda. One asked Regragui if he would resign that night or the next day. Another called for him to resign, saying children were crying in the stands because of him.
Though furious, Regragui managed a somewhat measured response. He said nothing that sounded like goodbye. Within two months, he was gone.
The Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) said on March 5 that it had parted ways with Regragui.
His statement was diplomatic in its restraint: “The dynamic needs new faces and different energy.” It was evidently stage-managed. While Regragui was still in post, the FRMF had been in negotiations with Jorge Sampaoli, the Argentine who coached Chile for the 2015 Copa America. A verbal agreement was apparently reached, before talks collapsed. Clearly, the anger at home was a key factor behind the change. The toxic press got what it wanted and the national team lost arguably the most valuable piece in its setup.
Regragui's Morocco had been the most captivating story in world football during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It became the first African team to reach the semifinal after overcoming Spain, Portugal and Belgium along the way.
Regragui and his boys had reframed what African football believed was possible. The phrase niya, meaning "pure intention", became attached to everything the team did. It pointed at something real: a group of players who ran through walls—for each other and for their coach.
The AFCON title was supposed to complete the story. But the weight of expectation proved to be a different burden from the liberation of being an underdog. In just three years, Regragui presided over his nation's highest footballing moment and a painful near-miss.
It would have been smart to keep him till the World Cup, but, the intense, fierce passion that fuels Moroccan football—perhaps best known to the world in the form of the Casablanca Derby—does not facilitate consistently smart choices.
On March 17, just around two weeks after Regragui left, the African football body’s appeals board ruled that Senegal had forfeited the final by leaving the pitch without the referee's authorisation, awarding Morocco a 3-0 victory and their first continental championship since 1976. Senegal have since announced an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, a process that typically takes a year to resolve.
The legality of the ruling is itself contested: a former member of the African confederation’s appeals board has already questioned publicly how the board arrived at a decision to override a referee's field-of-play authority. So, whether Morocco's AFCON title remains with it is genuinely uncertain. But even if it does, the irony is already complete: the prize arrived after the architect had been shown the door.
Regragui, 50, has been replaced by Mohamed Ouahbi, 49. The new coach has solid credentials. Last October, he guided Morocco's under-20 side to a World Cup title in Chile, defeating Argentina in the final.
He is a thoughtful tactician, familiar with the federation's inner workings and its emerging players. He is also a man who has never managed a senior international side, now inheriting one of the most psychologically complex dressing rooms in African football.
His first squad, named on March 19, carried clues about the future. Seven uncapped players received call-ups. Meanwhile Hakim Ziyech, Youssef En Nesyri and Sofyan Amrabat—names woven into the fabric of the Qatar generation—were absent.
It is still continuity, injected with a healthy dose of youth. Ouahbi’s ability to command the respect of players who regarded Regragui as a father figure will determine what he can achieve as much as any tactical system. That kind of loyalty is not inherited. It is built, slowly, from results and shared experiences under pressure. Ouahbi does not have that yet. What he has is a friendly against Ecuador in Madrid on March 27, then Paraguay in Lens, France, on March 31; then it is Brazil at the World Cup.
However, Regragui was only appointed three months before Qatar 2022, like Ouahbi now. Notably, the current coach may be even more qualified than his predecessor, thanks to his significant exposure to Belgian football.
The U-20 title was no fluke—it required clarity, man-management and nerve. With time, Ouahbi might forge something entirely his own.
Indeed, while Regragui offered the certainty of a tested system and a squad shaped to his hand, Ouahbi offers potential. The ghost the new coach has to tackle is not Regragui, but the memory of the Morocco that the world saw in Qatar: fearless, unified and eventually historic.