adminDOHA. – The world’s biggest party took place at Education City stadium in Doha on Tuesday night when Morocco upset Spain in the 2022 FIFA World Cup round of 16.
It exploded again on Saturday as the Atlas Lions reached the semi-finals.
After the team danced, hugged and cried in the dressing room, coach Walid Regragui made an extremely important declaration in his post-match press conference.
“At some point in Africa, we have to be ambitious and why not win the World Cup, even if it’s going to be hard,” he said.
The declaration was a sign of a paradigm shift in how African nations approach the World Cup, and it is fitting that it came from Regragui, who represents a paradigm-shift in African coaching.
Not only did he cut his teeth on the continent, spending his formative years coaching domestic football in Morocco, he is also part of the inaugural Caf Pro Licence class of 2018 – the very first group of coaches who secured football’s highest coaching diploma entirely on the continent.
He represents everything that is right in African football: He’s young, competent, cosmopolitan, fearless and a pan-Africanist at heart.
Senegal’s Aliou Cissé, Algeria’s Djamel Belmadi, Tunisia’s Radhi Jaidi and South Africa’s Benni McCarthy are other examples of the new African coaching prototype.
It is no coincidence that the 2022 World Cup was the first time all five African nations had African coaches to lead them.
But is Regragui right?
Should Africa be asking itself if it can win a World Cup?
As an African football journalist, I often dread the week ahead of World Cups because, without fail, at least one Western media outlet will ask me about Pele’s apocryphal mid-1970s prediction that an African team would win the tournament before the year 2000.
In the past, I mostly offered a cursory shrug of the shoulders, and replied that Pele said a lot of things that did not necessarily mean much, and left it at that.
This year, however, I re-considered my dismissive response.
In November, Cameroon football federation president Samuel Eto’o Fils declared that he was expecting Cameroon to beat Morocco in an all-African final.
He was immediately ridiculed online, mostly by his own compatriots, but he could be proved right.
Pele’s prediction that an African team could win the World Cup could come true in the next few days. – BBC Sport
Online Reporter