FIFA World Cup 2022: Morocco in seventh heaven

Updated On: 17 December, 2022 08:08 AM IST | Doha | Ashwin Ferro

Coach Walid Regragui insists: Irrespective of whether or not his team wins third-place match against Croatia today, they achieved the unthinkable by playing seven games at a World Cup

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Morocco players celebrate a goal v Portugal last week. Pic/getty images

Morocco coach Walid Regragui cannot stop praising his team. On the eve of Saturday’s third-place match against Croatia, Regragui insisted that winning or losing did not matter. “I realise that it is important to finish third rather than fourth, but my takeaway from all this is that we did not reach the final. We wanted to play that final on Sunday, not [the third-place match] tomorrow. I told my players this is our seventh World Cup game. In the beginning, if you told any Morocco fan that we would be playing our seventh game on December 17, they would be proud. Morocco played six World Cup games in around 20 years or so and now we have already played six in one tournament, in a single month. This is priceless. It’s like we have played two World Cups. But still to reach the very highest level, to win a World Cup, we still have some work to do, though we are not very far away,” Regragui said at the match-eve press conference at the Main Media Centre on Friday.

Walid Regragui