Rabat – Moroccan football player Hakim Ziyech said today that he will not return to Morocco’s national football team, stressing in a statement to the press that this is his “final decision.”
“Obviously, I understand them but I will not return to the national team. It is all clear for me how things are going and I am focusing on what I am doing,” he said.
Ziyech emphasized that he understands that it is bad news for his fans, saying: “I feel sorry for them.”
The football player also said he felt bad about Halilhodzic’s decision not to call him but he respects it as long as “others are in line with it.”
Ziyech’s decision followed Vahid Halilhodzic’s reluctance to call him up in major and decisive matches, including the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup and the just concluded Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).
Many fans of the Moroccan team lashed out at Halilhodzic after Morocco’s disappointing exit from the AFCON, with the overwhelming majority calling for the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) to sack the Bosnian coach.
Hallilhodzic’s failure to select Ziyech and Noussair Mazroui, two creative and world-class players who fans said could have made the difference in Morocco’s uninspired performance against Egypt in the AFCON quarter-finals, was the top reason many Atlas Lions fans said the Bosnian was unfit to manage the Moroccan team.
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But FRMF renewed its trust in Halilhodzic after the AFCON debacle. And in his very first post-AFCON press conference, the famously stubborn coach reiterated his position on Ziyech, saying he would have not called “even Messi” back to the national team had he misbehaved like Ziyech.
“You want me to beg someone to join the national team?” Halilhodzic had said when he announced his decision not to select Ziyech for the AFCON. And despite the Moroccan team’s lack of a creative midfielder again making it clear that Morocco needed a player of Ziyech caliber, Halihodzich has maintained that he will not call the Chelsea player back to his lineup.
Ziyech previously took to social media to refute the Bosnian manager’s recounting of their misunderstanding; the Chelsea playmaker suggested that though Halilhodzic was not telling the truth about what happened, he was still prepared to come back to the national team.
But with Halilizic continuing to cast the Chelsea star as a lazy and self-entitled player and amid the perception that the Bosnian coach still has the confidence and support of FRMF, Ziyech appears to have decided to simply throw in the towell and commit to his club career.
It now remains to be seen whether fans’ entreaties and back-room negotiations between the FRMF and Zieych, or between the FRMF and people in the player’s close entourage, will succeed in convincing him to change his mind about no longer playing for the Atlas Lions.
