Wydad Athletic Club’s most recent loss to Union Sportive Yacoub El Mansour, the team that sits at the very bottom of the Botola’s (the Moroccan football league) standings, came as yet another shock to the mythical Casablanca club’s fans as they witness what they see as another rapid descent into hell.
While Wydad is still among the top five teams in Botola, its failure to secure a win in the last five games while losing in three matches was enough of a red flag that continuing in this trajectory will result in a catastrophic season.
The panic is also due to the fact that, in recent years, the club has ceased to inspire fear in the hearts of its opponents as well as confidence in the minds of fans.
Why is that so? Who is to blame? And far more importantly, can the club’s sinking ship be rescued?
In need of self-criticism
It might be fair to say that the club’s administration, the players, and the fans all share the blame in Wydad’s current downfall.
Wydad fans might reject the charge that they have a share of responsibility as they’re not the ones making the key decisions affecting the club’s performance, from appointing the head coach and his staff, to buying and selling players. However, as was demonstrated by the tremendous amount of pressure they put on the club’s administration to sack the team’s former manager, Mohamed Amine Benhachem, after Wydad lost to AS FAR in Casablanca back in early March, fans can influence such decisions.
Whether we like it or not, the pressure undermined the team’s coach, and the administration’s indecision to quickly fire Benhachem or stand by him only made matters worse, culminating in Wydad’s getting knocked out of the CAF Confederation Cup quarter finals.
Those who wanted Benhachem gone often liked to argue that his resumé, which lacked any titles with the other clubs he managed, didn’t make him fit to coach a club with Wydad’s stature.
And yet, as other more cool-headed fans with a following on social media rightly pointed out, such an argument could have been accepted when Benhachem was nominated as head coach last summer after leading the team in its last three games the previous season as an interim manager. Once he was maintained in his role, there was no point in bringing up the topic every now and then. Also, that argument was irrelevant as Benhachem led Wydad to 9 wins out of 12 games the team played under his leadership in Botola.
While fans might be at fault, all fingers are now pointed at the Club’s president, Hicham Ait Menna, and the list of accusations is quite thick. They range from the far-fetched conspiracy theories that he is an agent working on behalf of a shadowy force to destroy the club to the rational criticism that exposes how his ideas run contrary to what makes a club successful.
Money isn’t all
Ait Menna’s detractors accuse him of putting financial goals at the top of his agenda ahead of what the fans care about more: winning titles. Ait Menna made the lethal mistake of selling the club’s stars, Burkina Faso international midfielder Stephane Aziz Ki and South African winger Thembinkosi Lorch, during the winter transfer window. The two players had a huge impact on Wydad’s highly positive run in the first half of this season.
To replace them, the administration bet on other names either out of shape, or at the end of their careers or too young to carry the weight of the team on their backs. As a result, the president’s policy simply disrupted Wydad.
While signing ex-big stars such as former Chelsea winger Hakim Ziyech and former Sevilla Striker Wissem Ben Yedder seemed like marketing stunts, recruiting players like Bolivian prodigy Moises Paniagua, former Morocco U-23 defender Ayman El Wafi, and Morocco U-23 midfielder Naim Byar was partly justified by Ait Menna as a move to “boost the club’s market value.” The idea behind this is that these young players’ contracts can be sold later with a good profit margin.
However, the one-million-dollar question was, is this what the team really needed to perform better on the pitch or at least maintain its overall level both in Botola and CAF Confederation Cup?
To make room for these newcomers, others who were starting players during the first half of the season had to sit on the bench, which only contributed to the team’s gradual disintegration.
Rising from the ashes
It seems unreasonable to think that Wydad president would care less about winning titles than the club’s fans do. After all, winning titles will generate good sums of money for the club and boost Ait Menna’s popularity. It’s not that he doesn’t want to win a title, it seems more likely that he is failing to grasp that in order for Wydad to achieve that, it needs two things: time and stability.
Signing big names and spending a lot of money isn’t necessarily a formula for winning titles. Building a competitive team takes time. Unfortunately, both the president and Wydad fans aren’t willing to accept that.
The club’s supporters are unwilling to let go of the nostalgia they have for the former president, Said Naciri’s era. But guess what, here are some crude facts: During the last two seasons of Naciri’s tenure, Wydad lost 4 consecutive finals and a race to the Botola title, partly because of the constant sacking and appointing of coaches. When Naciri was forced out of the club because of a highly publicized drug trafficking court case, mostly players just wanted to jump off what they saw as a sinking ship. This was a confirmation that his managing style, which made him concentrate most prerogatives in his hands, was unsustainable.
Wydad’s ship seems to be sinking again, though it may not be as bad as in the aftermath of Naciri’s arrest. Apparently, the ship can be salvaged provided time and stability are guaranteed.
Also, a little bit, or maybe a good amount, of humility is mostly needed. One can’t live on the memory of the past ten years, no matter how glorious they were for the club.
Today, Wydad isn’t the same as it was in 2017 or 2022 when the club won the African Champions League. To build again a team that’s competitive locally and continentally, one has to accept that Wydad may not win anything for a couple of years, provided that the team performs better each season than the previous one.
We can look at the example of AS FAR. In 2023, the Rabat-based team was knocked out of the CAF Confederation Cup quarter finals. The next season, they couldn’t even make it to the Champions League group stage. Last year they made it to the tournament’s quarter finals, and this year they’re in the Champions League final for the first time in 41 years.
Hopefully, AS FAR can lift the trophy. Their win will be the crowning of years of serious work to come back to the top of Moroccan and African football. For Wydad to do the same, the first step in this years-long journey has to be taken today.