The Moroccan national football team will face its Gabonese counterpart on Friday evening at the Grand Stadium in Agadir, in the opening match of Group Two of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, scheduled to be held in Morocco from December 21, 2025 to January 18, 2026.
As Morocco qualified as the tournament host, Walid Regragui, the coach of the “Atlas Lions”, will bet on giving new players a chance, increasing the level of harmony within the group, and improving collective and tactical performance, especially after the criticism he has received since his exit from the second round of the last African Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire at the beginning of this year.
Regragui said in press statements that the six matches in the African Nations Cup qualifiers are an opportunity to prepare the largest number of players for the continental tournament and ensure continuity by relying on young players, following his approach since the last World Cup in Qatar.
The Moroccan national team coach confirmed, in the press conference preceding Friday’s match, that he will take advantage of the matches against Gabon and Lesotho to test a group of players and plans, especially since the two opponents are competing to obtain a ticket to qualify for the “CAN” and will be a real test for the “Lions”.
Regragui indicated that he seeks to experiment and win in the matches against Gabon and Lesotho, adding: “We want to try some things and we want to win. We must win every time on our home ground in terms of performance and result. We have worked, throughout the week, on different points and we want to apply them on the field; but we must try as much as possible to reconcile experimentation and winning.”
The leader of the “Lions Battalion” called on eight players who won the bronze medal with the Olympic team at the Paris 2024 Olympics, in the matches against Zambia and Congo last June in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
The new list of the national team includes two new names: Adam Aznou (18 years old), a Bayern Munich player, and Zakaria El Wahidi (22 years old), a player for the Belgian club Genk, who won the bronze medal at the Paris Olympics with the Moroccan Olympic team.
On the other hand, Ismail Al-Sibari, the Dutch Eindhoven player, Osama Al-Azouzi, the Italian Bologna player, and Shadi Riyad, the English Crystal Palace defender, are absent due to injury.
As has been the case for years, the “Atlas Lions” roster consists mostly of professional players in European, African and Gulf clubs; while the Moroccan local league is represented by Mounir El Mohamadi and Mehdi Ben Abid, goalkeepers for the Renaissance Berkane and Royal Army teams.
The final list of the “Atlas Lions” was controlled by a group of factors, all of which are related to forced absences, as well as Walid Regragui’s efforts to try out new players in certain positions to fill the deficit in some positions that have been suffering for months, especially in the defense line.
For this reason, the Moroccan national coach preferred to temporarily exclude some players, such as Romain Saiss, the Al Sadd player, and Yahya Attiat Allah, who recently moved to Al Ahly of Egypt from Sochi of Russia on loan, to assess the level of new players and bring back others he had previously excluded, such as Achraf Dari and Younes Abdelhamid.
The biggest challenge for Regragui is not choosing the best formation for each match, but rather the tactical choices that ensure the benefit of the players’ skills within a combination that guarantees him achieving the desired goal of achieving victory in terms of result and performance.
Despite their lack of competitiveness at the start of the new sports season, the coach of the “Atlas Lions” insisted on the presence of Azzedine Ounahi and Nayef Aguerd, considering them two of the pillars of the national team, who are heavily relied upon in the next stage; which explains why both players rejected tempting financial offers from the Gulf in order to stay in one of the European leagues.
The match against Gabon represents a challenge to Regragui’s individual and tactical choices, after the difficulties he faced in the past months in imposing his style of play on his competitors and forming a character that reflects the distinguished level he showed in the Qatar 2022 World Cup; these are facts that the coach and players of the Gabonese national team are well aware of.
The teams of Gabon, Central Africa and Lesotho, the two sides of Group B, are competing for a single qualification card. If one of the three teams tops the final ranking, it will qualify. However, if Morocco tops the ranking, the qualification card will go to the team in second place.
The Moroccan national team will face Lesotho next Monday in the second round of the qualifiers, at Adrar Stadium in Agadir.
