“I can play a lot of different styles,” said Morocco’s coach, Walid Regragui, this month. “I admire Guardiola, Simeone and Ancelotti, but I also have my own style which allows me to adapt the team according to the qualities of the players available.”
Regragui, a former defender born in France to parents from Fnideq in northern Morocco, spent three years playing in Spain and won 45 caps for Morocco but never appeared at a World Cup finals. Yet his appointment to replace the Bosnian Vahid Halilhodzic at the end of August represented a significant moment in the history of African football.
His presence on the touchline in Qatar, along with that of his fellow former professionals Aliou Cissé of Senegal, Cameroon’s Rigobert Song and Ghana’s Otto Addo, and Tunisia’s ultra-experienced career coach Jalel Kadri, means that for the first time all of the continent’s representatives at the World Cup will have an African manager in the dugout. Fittingly, each is homegrown.
The 47-year-old Regragui deserves his opportunity having guided Wydad Casablanca to a surprise victory in the CAF Champions League final over the reigning champions Al Ahly in May after six successful years at FUS Rabat and having won the Qatari title with Al-Duhail in 2020. Regragui’s Champions League triumph saw him dubbed the “Moroccan Guardiola” by a Tunisian commentator but there is no doubting the former assistant to Rachid Taoussi is his own man after he recalled Chelsea’s Hakim Ziyech from the international wilderness.
Whether he can follow in the footsteps of Nigeria’s Stephen Keshi, who became the first homegrown coach to lead an African side to the knockout stages in 2014, remains to be seen given their task in a difficult group containing Belgium, Croatia and Canada. Morocco will hope for a repeat of their breakthrough success under the Brazilian José Faria at the 1986 World Cup when they topped a group that included England before being eliminated in the last 16 by West Germany.
Until 2014, only 10 of 38 African teams at the World Cup were led by homegrown coaches, with the three sides who reached the quarter-finals – Cameroon in 1990, Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 2010 – managed by Europeans.
The straight-talking Cissé, captain of Bruno Metsu’s team that shocked the reigning champions and Senegal’s former colonial masters France in the opening match in 2002, was one of two African home-grown coaches at the last World Cup in Russia and suffered the agony of seeing his team eliminated because of an inferior disciplinary record. Level on all other criteria with Japan, they went out.
Since then the Teranga Lions have developed a more ruthless streak and were crowned African champions for the first time in February, even if their chances of making a real impression in this tournament have been hit by Sadio Mané’s absence through injury.
“I represent a new generation that would like to have its place in African and world football,” said Cissé, a former Birmingham and Portsmouth midfielder, four years ago. “We need African coaches for our football to go ahead.”
Cissé has been in charge of Senegal since 2015 but has worked with many of the same players for almost a decade after starting as an assistant to the Under-23s. Song, who won 137 caps and played at four World Cups, also has some experience at the helm having served as Cameroon’s caretaker manager for an extended period in 2017 before returning in February after the Africa Cup of Nations.
The 46-year-old’s presence in Qatar is all the more remarkable given that six years ago he suffered a cerebral attack and was in a coma for two days. Emulating his 1994 mentor Léonard Nséké and becoming the second Cameroonian to qualify for the World Cup as a coach was a huge endorsement of his credentials.
For Addo the opportunity to manage Ghana after their group-stage exit at Afcon under Milovan Rajevac, their coaching hero of 2010, came as something of a surprise. Born in Germany, he played for Borussia Dortmund at the time he won most of his 15 Ghana caps and the 47-year-old’s day job is still as talent coach for the club’s rising stars – a role that has included working closely with England’s Jude Bellingham.
Having stepped up from being Rajevac’s assistant, Addo masterminded a famous victory over Nigeria to qualify and has his sights on a revenge mission against Luis Suárez’s Uruguay in Group H. Suárez’s goalline handball in 2010 denied Ghana likely passage to the semi-finals.
Of all the African managers heading to Qatar, Tunisia’s Kadri has the most experience. The 50-year-old began his coaching career in 2002 and spent time as assistant to Nabil Maâloul with the national team in 2013 before returning to the role under Mondher Kebaier last year. Kadri was promoted when Kebaier contracted Covid during Afcon and landed the job permanently after their victory over Nigeria.
Tunisia became the first African team to win a match at the World Cup in 1978, under their homegrown coach Abdelmajid Chetali, but have never reached the knockout stages and may find it tough to progress from a group with France, Denmark and Australia.
All five of Africa’s representatives failed to qualify from the group stages in Russia – the first time since 1982 that none had made it through. But as the Confederation of African Football said this month, the presence of five African coaches in Qatar “represents a giant step towards the development of African football”.
