MOGAMAD ALLIE: Curse of the coach who succeeded and was then dumped

Vahid Halilhodzic has every reason to feel he is cursed.

In four attempts at qualifying the national teams he’s coached for the World Cup, he’s succeeded on every occasion, the latest being with Morocco’s Atlas Lions. It makes him the first coach to qualify four different countries for Fifa’s flagship event.

The problem though is that he’s been in the coaching dugout at the World Cup on just one occasion, at the 2014 tournament in Brazil when his Algeria side gave eventual winners Germany an almighty scare in their second-round clash before bowing out with immense credit after extra time.

Halilhodzic previously qualified Ivory Coast for the 2010 World Cup and Japan for the 2018 tournament in Russia, but on both occasions he wasn’t around to complete his mission.

Four months ahead of the 2010 World Cup the Ivorians replaced him with Sven Goran Eriksson while Akira Nishino, the Japan FA’s technical director at the time, was given just two months to prepare the Samurai Warriors for the last tournament in Russia after Halilhodzic was summarily dumped.

Now it looks like the French-born former Morocco international Walid Regragui or the Italian Walter Mazzari, the two favourites to take over, will also have to hit the ground running just three months ahead of the World Cup should either be appointed as coach of the Atlas Lions.

In a case of lightning unbelievably striking for a third time, the Bosnian national was shown the door by the Royal Morocco Football Federation (RMFF) last week.

After three years in the job in which he qualified the north Africans for their sixth appearance at the World Cup, Halilhodzic fell on his own sword for trying to enforce discipline and prioritising the team ethic.

Not that his departure was unexpected. The longer the impasse with poster boy Hakim Ziyech persisted the more likely it became that the 69-year-old former Yugoslavia international would not be taking the team to Qatar.

Halilhodzic could easily have chosen the expedient option of smoking the peace pipe and bowing to the Chelsea star’s whims and fancies. Instead he chose the high road, sticking to his principles, refusing to bow to player and fan pressure.

His latest sacking is clearly the result of player power and his unwillingness to accede to the demand by powerful RMFF president Fouzi Lekjaa to patch up his differences with Ziyech.

The 29-year-old Chelsea midfielder, who last played for his country in a friendly against Ghana in June 2021, announced his retirement from the national team citing tension with the coach.

The frosty relationship between the pair started when  Halilhodzic accused Ziyech of faking injuries to avoid national duty. The Dutch-born player was furious and decided to walk away from the team. 

Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui also quit for similar reasons but reconciled with Halilhodzic, resulting in his inclusion in the squad that played at this year’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Cameroon.

When Lekjaa declared in an official statement that “Given the differences and divergent visions between the Royal Moroccan Football Federation and national coach Vahid Halilhodzic on the best way to prepare the national football team for the Qatar 2022 World Cup, the two parties decided to separate,” it was obvious that the continued absence of Ziyech was the main reason for the sacking.

It didn’t matter that Halilhodzic is one of the most successful coaches in the game.

In 1997, not long after starting his coaching career, he led Raja Casablanca to the Confederation of African Football’s Champions League title and also won the Moroccan league title. When he arrived at Lille a year later, the club was struggling to stay in the French second division, yet two-and-a-half years later he had them playing in the group stages of the Uefa Champions League.

A two-time Golden Boot winner in France’s Ligue 1 with Nantes in 1983 and 1985, Halilhodzic took Paris Saint-Germain to a runners-up spot in the league and victory in the Coupe de France in the 2003-2004 season in what was one of PSG’s best-ever seasons at the time.

A few coaches will empathise with the Bosnian’s fate of being denied the opportunity of going to the World Cup with the team they qualified, having endured the same painful experience themselves. 

Clive Barker, who booked Bafana Bafana’s ticket to the 1998 World Cup, quit after the team’s poor performances at the 1997 Confederations Cup in Saudi Arabia. It was the eccentric Frenchman Philippe Troussier who took charge of the team at the World Cup.

History repeated itself in 2002 when Carlos Queiroz resigned just three months before the World Cup in Japan and Korea after a row over his position with the team. Jomo Sono was then installed as technical director by Safa and he took Bafana to the Far East.

Four years later Stephen Keshi qualified minnows Togo for the 2006 World Cup but was replaced by Otto Pfister just three months before the tournament in Germany after the team lost all three games at the Nations Cup in Egypt. It mattered little that the late Keshi booked the tiny west African nation’s spot ahead of strong teams like Senegal, who reached the quarterfinals of the 2002 tournament.

At least the former Nigeria captain got the chance to take his own country to the 2014 World Cup where the Super Eagles exited in the first round.