This week, in the run-up to Morocco’s quarterfinal match against Portugal, coach Walid Regragui spoke about the importance of his team’s effort to become the first African nation to reach the World Cup semifinals. Specifically, he noted that few (North) African coaches have been employed to manage European clubs, and he said, “We want to show that Africa deserves to be here. Morocco deserves to be here.”
He asked, “Why don’t [the European clubs] hire Arab coaches?”
He continued, “Maybe it's a cultural question, maybe it's a mentality aspect. Today, I think it's impossible that Manchester City or Barcelona will bring an Arab coach. They don't even think about it, as if we're not worthy. As if we we're ignorant in football or we're incapable of such a task.”
Regragui, who played professional mostly in France, has spent his 11-year coaching career working for clubs in Morocco and Qatar. During that time, he said, opportunities elsewhere – in Europe – did not other arise due to a perceived lack of experience.
“It's impossible for him, let's look for somebody else,” he said, describing evaluations of his perceived abilities as coach of a European club, before noting that after only seven games in charge of the Moroccan national team, he is on the verge of making history.
“Explain that to me,” he said. “Explain this miracle. Experience? It doesn't matter. It's skills. It doesn't matter your background, religiously speaking or culturally speaking or where you from. Skills are the only measure.”
Well, yes and no.
Undoubtedly, there is a huge amount of prejudice that blocks Arab, African and other (e.g. Japanese, Korean or even South American, if you are not from Argentina) coaches from being hired as European football managers, but at the same time, the “What have you achieved, why should we hire you?” question is legitimate. And exists in every industry.
Achieving success in Europe (at the highest levels of the game) almost certainly will require a willingness to gain experience by perhaps taking a job at a lower level in Europe than you might find at home. To work your way up within the system, to demonstrate the value you can add.
A few years ago, a friend and I took our sons to watch our “local” football team, Yokohama F Marinos, play visiting Vissel Kobe. I’m not a J League (Japanese first division) expert, but over the years I have seen a dozen or so games live, plus another dozen or so on television. Yokohama plays most of its games in Nissan Stadium, a 72,000-seat behemoth that is a terrible place to watch a match, but some games are held at 15,000-seat Mitsuzawa Stadium, where we went that night, and which affords spectators the opportunity to observe the players at close range.
What struck me, watching the play from the fifth row, 10 meters from the touch line, was the work rate of the foreign players, who seemed to be playing harder than most of their Japanese teammates. And that’s perfectly understandable, I think. Foreign players are in Japan at the pleasure of their Japanese employers, and unless they produce results, they will be gone very, very quickly.
What did surprise me was that if the foreigner players were giving 100 percent, some (many?) of the Japanese players appeared to be giving … 50 percent. As though they had arrived at the top of their profession (from their limited-to-the-borders-of-Japan perspective), and were content to hit the cruise control button, drive their 3-series BMWs to the mall, date former “talents” (the Japanese term for B-list celebrity models or actresses), and flip through fashion magazines to decide what expensive haircuts to get.
Yes, over the past 20 years an increasing number of Japanese players have made the decision to play in Europe, way out of their comfort zones, in an effort to improve their abilities, but the J League is where most Japanese top out, and very happily.
Years ago, I read about a coaching seminar given by two Kenyan athletes, Moses Kiptanui and Paul Koech, to a group of European athletics coaches. Koech, who was the World Half Marathon Champion in 1998 and ran 26:36 for 10,000 meters, was asked why British runners were not competitive with Kenyans (this was well before Mo Farah).
Koech said he felt the main reason was attitude. He said that when he was competing, he prioritized running completely, and said he did not feel most Western runners were prepared to do the same. Koech and his peers lived this life: wake up, eat, train, shower, nap, eat, train, shower, eat, sleep. Repeat. And he said to the European coaches assembled before him, who had been wondering for years if East Africans had some sort of insuperable genetic advantage, “Is that a life you’d be prepared to live?”
It’s not just Japanese footballers, of course, who prefer the easy road. It’s American footballers (soccer players, that is) who prefer Major League Soccer to second division Dutch or German or Spanish teams, and it’s most professional athletes ranked outside the top 20 in their sports.
The money is good (in some cases the money is great – the minimum salary for an NBA rookie is $925,258, and Houston’s Sam Dekker played one minute in 2021-2022; his seventh season in the league, during which time he has played a total of 85 minutes and 24 seconds, and been paid $8,271,654), the livin’ is easy, and what differentiates the great from the good is hard work, lots of it. And hard work is quite a bit like … hard work.
But here’s the thing: there’s nothing more obvious than 50 percent effort. If I ask you to identify the people in your organization who are half-assing it, you’ll be able to do it in a second.
Everyone at the top (of any profession) has talent. What differentiates the good from the great is effort. In sport, and in business.
For coaches (and players), an important component of “effort” is a willingness to get out of your comfort zone. Almost by definition, extreme effort is … uncomfortable.
And so, rather than complaining about the lack of opportunity, my question for North African (Arab) coaches is: “Are you willing to get out of your comfort zone? Am you willing to sacrifice the 3-bedroom flat in Casablanca’s Ain Diab neighborhood, the BMW X5 SUV and the B-list celebrity girlfriend in order to move to another country where you are not celebrated, where you may not speak the language as a native (if you set your sights on the British Premier League, Spain’s La Liga or Germany’s Bundesliga, rather than France’s Ligue 1), and where you have to work your way up?
In his press conference this week, Regragui said, “I want to change the mentality. A lot of African coaches can actually coach in Europe and in great clubs.”
No doubt.
But few people, in any industry, are simply handed the top prize. They have to fight for it. They have to sacrifice. They have to get out of their comfort zones.
The top players (and coaches) in every sport differentiate themselves by working harder. By sacrificing more.
Michael Jordan was one of the best basketball players in history, often making his supernatural exploits look “easy”. But if you didn’t know or suspect it earlier, the Netflix documentary The Last Dance showed that Jordan had more desire, and worked harder, than almost anyone else.
In the documentary, we see former University of North Carolina (UNC) assistant coach Roy Williams remembering that Jordan had told him he wanted to be the best basketball player ever to play at UNC — a school that had already won one NCAA championship, and nearly two dozen conference championships, before Jordan’s arrival.
Williams said he told the young Jordan that he would have to work even harder than he had in high school in order to accomplish that goal, to which Jordan replied he’d worked as hard as anyone else on his high school team.
Williams then said, “I told him, ‘Excuse me. I thought you just told me you wanted to be the best player to ever play here’.”
Jordan replied, “I’m going to show you. Nobody will ever work as hard as I work.”
Jordan was probably not the best player ever to play for North Carolina during his time there, but he became the best basketball player ever (sorry, I‘m not going to debate that with you) after he left.
Years later, he offered a reminder about what it takes to be the best, even if you do have extraordinary talent: “I'm not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat.”
What’s the “secret” to success?
Ambition, effort, sacrifice, and a willingness to get out of your comfort zone.
You hit the nail, Roberto. The attitude of some coaches like this one is a mixture of victimhood and an exaggerated ego. But you have to see the context: they face the worst versions of other national teams (such as Germany or Spain), their only strategy is sometimes based on defending and risking everything on penalties, etc. We should not miss the point he defines it as a "miracle". Is it enough to coach Barcelona, Paris St. Germaine, Bayern, Manchester City? As you say, they also need "ambition, effort, sacrifice, and a willingness to get out of your comfort zone".
Many of the best Spanish basketball players usually start in the NBA in the teams at the bottom of the list. The NBA is much more demanding than the Spanish league, more games are played, so they have to work harder to stand out and be hired by top teams.
In a documentary about Ara Malikian, a Lebanese violinist of Armenian descent (now with Spanish nationality), he told he got a scholarship to leave his country in the middle of the armed conflict and go to Germany to study. His father told him that he should take the opportunity and work harder than any German, so when the teachers said that the students had to practice 2 hours a day, Germans would practice 2 hours, but he would practice 8, 10 or 12 hours. Hard work. Effort. Sacrifice.