“After the warm-up, Yassine Bono was not feeling well, so I preferred that whoever is 100% ready participate,” Rekragui said.
Bono was supposed to enter as an official goalkeeper for the Moroccan national team, but he was replaced by Mounir Al-Mohammadi a few seconds before the starting whistle was given.
The “Atlas Lions” coach added, “In this type of competition between showing and winning, we chose to win. We can achieve beautiful things, and without the fans, we would not have been able to achieve this achievement.”
For his part, Abdelhamid Sabiri (the scorer of the first goal) said: “This is a big day for Morocco. We tried to do everything to win this match. We got a free kick and I asked for it to be taken, and this is what happened, and the ball ended up in the net.”
With that double, the Moroccan national team put forward in the final price round by defeating Belgium, the third of the last and second-ranked version, on Sunday, at Al-Thumama Stadium in Doha, in the opening of the second round of Group F competitions in the Qatar Football World Cup 2022.
Morocco owes its first victory in the current version and the third in its history to the two substitutes, Italian Sampdoria midfielder Abdel Hamid Sabiri (73), and French Toulouse striker Zakaria Abu Khalil (90 + 2).
Morocco returned the debt to Belgium 28 years after losing 0-1 to it in the group stage in the 1994 World Cup in the United States, and it is close to repeating its achievement in 1986 when it reached the final price for the first and last time in its history and became the first Arab and African team to achieve this.
#Morocco #coach #comments #historic #victory #goalkeepers #injury