WAC hope corner has been turned as they fly flag for Moroccan football at Club World Cup

Wydad prepare for tournament that sees them take on Man City, Juventus and Al Ain

Were the Fifa Club World Cup, in its freshly enhanced format, not to include a participant from Morocco, the absence would be glaring.

Few other countries have moved so impressively up the sport's hierarchy in the last five years. But there’s an uncomfortable question confronting Wydad Athletic Club of Casablanca (WAC), as they head to the US. Are they, in their current condition, best placed to represent their nation’s football renaissance?

Fact is, WAC are a long way from looking like the conquerors who earned the second of Africa’s four tickets to Fifa's big event by carrying off the Confederation of African Football’s Champions League title in 2021-22.

In many respects that triumph provided a direct impulse for perhaps Morocco’s greatest six months on the world stage. The manager of that WAC side was Walid Regragui, who would, after some hurried headhunting in the late summer of 2022, become the manager of the Atlas Lions. By December, Regragui had led Morocco to a World Cup semi-final.

How WAC’s vast, noisy fan base long for some of that sheen to rub back on them. The club have just finished third in the domestic league, a couple of notches up from the disastrous fifth place of the previous season.

Their once-routine connection with major international competition has been severed since March last year, when they exited the CAF Champions League campaign at the group stage. It’s a steep fall.

WAC, African champions twice in the last eight seasons, had reached at least the semi-finals of their continent’s most prestigious club tournament seven times since 2016.

Which is not to mention the ructions off the pitch, where the former president, the man in the position of maximum authority through those years of bounty, Said Naciri, is on trial for his alleged part in a contraband trafficking network. He denies the charges.

For his successor, Hicham Ait-Menna, who assumed the presidency last year, the challenges have been many, the best formulas for re-establishing status elusive. Coaches have come and gone at a spectacular rate.

Since Regragui departed, bound for sporting immortality with the national team, 10 different men have battled to measure up to his legacy.

The defence of the league and continental double would be entrusted, variously, to Hussein Ammouta, later of UAE’s Al Jazira; to the Tunisian, Medhi Nafti; to the Spaniard Juan Carlos Garrido; and to the Belgian Sven Vandenbroek. In 2023-24 Adil Ramzi, Faouzi Benzarti and Aziz Ben Askar all held the reins.

Then, last summer, came a bold statement of intent, when the studious South African Rhulani Mokwena was hired on the back of his work at Mamelodi Sundowns, and, specifically, on the slick pass-and-move style he had developed there.

Mokwena’s arrival coincided with a major squad overhaul, partly necessitated by financial constraints – WAC were negotiating their way clear of a Fifa transfer ban – in which the experienced Yahya Jabrane completed the exodus of Wydad players who had been at the Qatar World Cup with Morocco.

Rhulani Mokwena was replaced as WAC manager weeks before the Club World Cup. Alamy

Mokwena brought in allies such as striker Cassius Mailula and winger Thembinkosi Lorch, compatriots he knew from home. But the first two months applying the Mokwena method were very mixed.

WAC, whose history boasts more league titles than any Moroccan club, managed just three wins from the first eight matches.

“It's not easy coming from South Africa to Morocco,” reflected Lorch.

“WAC is a pressure-cooker for a coach,” Mokwena told the broadcaster Supersport.

By the end of April, that pressure had told. Mokwena was informed he would not be seeing out the season, nor, to his great regret, testing himself against Manchester City, Juventus and Al Ain in the Club World Cup’s Group G.

The parting of ways frustrated Mokwena, who, while acknowledging that WAC’s sluggish start to the season meant they were always playing catch-up with a buoyant Renaissance Berkane in the league title chase, felt a corner had been turned in the new year.

In 2025 WAC have, at least, not lost a league fixture, albeit that too many draws were not turned into wins. Gathering up the threads of that momentum is 50-year-old Amine Benhachem, whose relationship with the club stretches back to his time there as a junior player, and who previously served WAC as an assistant coach.

Since being given the main job, he has been in a hurry to make his squad CWC-ready. “We have to get to the right level quickly,” he admitted after last month’s friendlies against Sevilla and Porto, two pedigree European opponents invited to Casablanca to replicate some of what his players will face out in the US.

Both visitors won narrowly, but Benhachem was encouraged by aspects of the performances and the integration of new signings. Wydad have been busy in the extra transfer window made available by Fifa to Club World Cup participants.

There was speculative, but unanswered, interest in a short-term deal for Cristiano Ronaldo. What they have instead are a centre-forward, Hamza Hannouri, 27, recruited from FUS Rabat, and the Burkinabe international attacking midfielder, Stephane Aziz Ki, 29, from Tanzania’s Young Africans.

There is also a resonant new name on the teamsheet, a name that strongly evokes Moroccan success: Amrabat – although it is the older of the footballing brothers, Nordin, rather than Sofyan, the midfield dynamo of the Atlas Lions midfield at Qatar 2022.

But Nordin Amrabat, should he find his groove, offers great creative range and huge experience. He has joined after a brief spell with Hull City in England’s Championship, the eighth different league he has graced in a career that started in the Netherlands and travelled through the top divisions of Turkey, Spain, Greece, Saudi Arabia and England.

He boasts 64 caps for Morocco, the last of them in 2019, and if he is now a mature 38, he remains, he says, a crowd-pleaser “with big dreams and targets.”

Nordin Amrabat has faced Juventus in the Uefa Champions League. He has, in the Premier League, taken on Pep Guardiola's City. That’s a know-how that should benefit his WAC colleagues.

“We have to be excited to play, and not afraid to face top players,” says Jamal Harkass, the WAC captain, who was given his Morocco debut by Regragui earlier this season.

“Big players grow by facing other big players. We just need to stay highly focused and ambitious – and deliver a performance that represents Moroccan football in the best way possible.”