Wydad coach: "We studied Juventus well but the plan wasn’t executed properly"
- Hossam Ahmed
- Jun 23
- 2 min read
Wydad AC head coach Mohamed Amine Benhachem admitted that his players failed to fully implement the game plan during their 4-1 loss to Juventus in the second round of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup group stage, currently taking place in the United States.
The Moroccan side sits at the bottom level with Emirati club Al Ain in Group G with no points and just one goal scored after also losing 2-0 to Manchester City in their opening match.
Speaking in the post-match press conference, as quoted by "Elbotola", Benhachem said:
"We studied Juventus before the match and confirmed that the key players are Conceição and Yildiz. The player assigned to mark Conceição did a great job, didn’t give him space or let him provide solutions. As for Yildiz, the player who was assigned to mark him lost track of him three times, and the result is that he scored three goals."
He added:
"A game plan was set, but it wasn’t executed properly. I don’t blame the players because it’s hard to fully absorb the plan in just three days. We lost focus during certain periods and paid a heavy price for it. I always say: when you play at the highest level, if you leave even one inch, you will concede — and that’s exactly what happened. In the Moroccan league, you can make more than three mistakes in a match and still end up winning. Here, if you make a mistake, you lose."
"I didn’t expect that we would lose — let alone by such a big margin. But as I said, the game plan wasn’t applied 100%, and we do have the excuse of limited time. I am truly upset because I promised the fans that we wanted to qualify and achieve a positive result — but we couldn’t do it."
The Wydad coach admitted that the outlines of next season’s squad are beginning to take shape:
"Yes, the features of the players we’ll keep and the identity of the team that will compete in the league and the Confederation Cup next season are starting to become clear. As everyone knows, Wydad played with two different squads in the last two seasons, and this is the third season we’ll be entering with new players — so stability is lacking. That’s one of the positive points of this participation."
He concluded:
"It’s true that we tried and created chances against top teams, and that’s something positive. But when you get knocked out, that’s it — you’re out. You don’t keep talking about positives. What should I tell people? That I won? No, I didn’t win — I lost. We had the capabilities to do something positive, and that’s why it hurts. We needed more focus and to achieve more than what we did."
