Present at a press conference on the eve of Morocco – France, the semi-final of the World Cup scheduled for Wednesday, Walid Regragui, the Moroccan coach, did not mince words about the fashion for stats in football and rallied those who criticize the Atlas Lions’ style of play.
Walid Regragui made the show on Tuesday at a press conference at 24 hours from the highly anticipated Morocco – France, boiling semi-final of the 2022 World Cup. The Moroccan coach, hero of an entire country just two months after taking the reins of the selection after the ousting of Vahid Halilhodzic, largely returned to criticism of the style of play of the Atlas Lions, considered too restrictive and defensive. “You journalists dream of possession of the ball, 60 or 70%, do you like it, he attacked. There are also xGs, expected goals, what an invention, that …”, said blew the ex-defender about this new statistic which combines several criteria to measure the dominance or not of a team during a match. “Oh we had 4 xG and we lost … But if you gave 4 xG to your wooden attacker, it makes sense!”, he also underlined, not without humor.
Walid Regragui has mainly responded to criticism of the stats of the match against Spain in the round of 16 or against Portugal in the quarter-finals, not sparing Spanish football and his propensity to display overwhelming ball possession. “If you have 70% possession and you shoot twice… I’m going to ask Infantino (FIFA president, editor’s note) if he can give a point or more for possession,” he said. slipped with humor before recalling, not without tackling two former opponents in this World Cup, Belgium in the group stages and Portugal in the quarterfinals “when you have De Bruyne or Bernardo Silva, it is sure that you have the ball”.
“Tomorrow, I might look like a fool”
Walid Regragui looked back on his career and his training as a coach. “I went through Spain, it was my dream, the tiki taka, Guardiola he drove me crazy at one point”, he recalled, he who evolved in Santander after having had a good day. from Créteil, Ajaccio or Grenoble in France. “Then I grew up. Before, we liked the African teams, a little dancing, it plays well, Boufal put us two little bridges, it’s cool, then he comes home. Well no. It’s is over, we’ve moved on. We can win, with the minimum”, he judged before adding: “There is not just one way to play”. If he has no complex when it comes to facing the Blues, Walid Regragui took the French game as an example to recall his philosophy. “What we want: to concede as few xGs as possible. France made me dream in 2018, they understood everything in 2018, they blew everyone up like that, you have to follow their example. The rest, the data… We had 0.001% of winning the World Cup, today, what are we at? 0.03%? Ah, we have a 12% chance now? (He laughs) Tomorrow, maybe I’ll go – to be for an idiot, we will say: “He will have talked too much”. in Portugal and still uncertain for this France-Morocco shock.