Walid Regragui has not changed his mind about what happened in the AFCON final.
For him, Senegal walking off the pitch for 15 or 16 minutes was not only wrong. It changed the match, put Brahim Diaz in an entirely different situation before his penalty and, above all, left African football looking bad.
“Honestly, we’ve never seen someone go and snap in the dressing room for 15 minutes and say we’ve left the pitch. It was a disgrace,” Regragui said on Canal+, where he is now working as a consultant.
His anger was directed largely at Senegal coach Pape Thiaw, who took his players off after Morocco were awarded a late penalty.
Regragui believes the interruption cannot simply be separated from what happened when Diaz eventually stepped up to take the kick.
“If we want to debate this honestly, didn’t the fact that a team left the pitch for 15 or 16 minutes change Brahim Diaz’s mindset when he went to take a penalty?” he asked.
He drew a comparison with Kylian Mbappé, who had complained after missing a penalty against Morocco following a much shorter stoppage.
“When Kylian missed the penalty against Morocco because the referee stopped the game for two minutes, he said he had been wronged. Here, there were 15 minutes before the penalty was taken. Wouldn’t that have changed things?”
The final, he argued, should have been an advertisement for how far African football had come.
“We could have put on a celebration and shown that African football had taken a step forward,” he said, pointing to the stadiums Morocco had built and a final between what he described as perhaps Africa’s two best teams of the past five or six years.
Instead, millions watching around the world saw a match descend into scenes Regragui believes reinforced precisely the image African football had been trying to leave behind.
“We saw things that have no place on a football pitch, from both sides,” he said. “The biggest loser today is African football.”
He did not absolve Morocco of everything that happened. But on the decision to leave the pitch, he was unequivocal.
“Whether you win or not, in the end you made a decision that tarnishes African football.”
AFP
The argument over the final is not over.
CAF has awarded the title to Morocco, but the case is now before the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
CAS is due to hear it in Lausanne on October 8.
Regragui says that decision, whatever it is, will settle the matter for him.
“For now, CAF has awarded us the title. Now there is CAS,” he said. “We will wait for the decision and we will accept CAS’s decision, whichever way it goes.”
