Fan Zhiyi, a former mainland international footballer, has a famous saying: Xiao Gao is quite good, what do you change him for?
Bosnian coach Halikhodžić must have been deeply impressed by this sentence, and he was recently forced to step down from Morocco, which is the third time in his coaching career that he has been sacked by the team after leading the team to qualify for the World Cup.
August 12 is the 100th to last day of this year's World Cup in Qatar, just at this critical juncture of the 100-day sprint, Halhodzic received a notice from the Moroccan Football Association that the World Cup has nothing to do with him, and his coaching position will be replaced by the country's local coach Walid Regragi.
Halikhodžić took over the coaching whip of Morocco in 2019. In this World Cup qualifier, he led Morocco to win all 6 games in the group stage, scoring 20 goals and conceding only 1 goal, and defeated the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 5-2 in the next two legs of the knockout rounds to successfully enter the World Cup.
This time, the reason for Halhodzic's dismissal is mainly due to his contradictions with Morocco's two major stars, Ziyeh and Mazlawi, the former refused to come off the bench in a friendly match, and the latter had a bad attitude and was late in the training of the national team, so Halhodzic broke with the two and refused to add them to the World Cup roster. The Moroccan Football Association eventually chose its own stars between foreign coaches and national stars.
Halihodžić first encountered this sort of donkey slaughter in 2010, when he was fired by Ivorian in 104 days from the penultimate world cup in South Africa.
At that World Preliminary Tournament, Halikhodzic led the Ivory Coast team to also win the first place in the group stage, and the points were the highest in all african groups, and successfully qualified for the World Cup. However, in early 2010, there was an African Cup of Nations event, and the Ivorian team was eliminated by Algeria in the quarter-final in extra time, which caused strong dissatisfaction throughout the country in Côte d'Ivoire, and Harihodžić, who eventually led the team to the World Cup, was sacked because of the defeat of this game.
Not all of the teams that will fire Halihodzic before the World Cup are African teams, and he was treated the same in Japan in 2018.
In the Round of 12 in 2017, Halikhodzic led Japan to the first place in Group B and successfully qualified for the World Cup.
After the round of 12, Halikhodzic led the so-called "Japanese second team" to the East Asian Cup at the end of the year, and finally the Japanese team lost 1-4 to the South Korean team and ranked second in the case of successive victories over north Korea and China. The nature of the East Asian Cup is well understood, and losing in such a game is not a big deal, but Harihodzic commented on the loss: "I am surprised by South Korea's explosiveness, technology and control of the game. South Korea rules us in every way. Such remarks caused strong dissatisfaction in Japanese football and quarreled for months, and Harry Hodzic then led the Japanese team to a mediocre performance in several warm-up matches, and finally the Japanese Football Association made the decision to fire Halihodzic on the 66th day of the world cup in Russia.
Halihodžić was very unhappy with the dismissal of the Japanese team, and he later sued the president of the Japanese Football Association, Kozo Tajima.
Halihodžić is always sacked before the World Cup, which is not unrelated to his tough personality, but there is also a reason why he always leads the team to the World Cup, and since 2010 he has successfully passed the World Preliminary Tournament for four consecutive times.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil was the only World Cup that Halihodžić has participated in so far in his coaching career. He led Algeria to the round of 16 in that tournament, and in the quarter-finals his team fought against Germany, who eventually won the championship, all the way to extra time, only to lose by a one-goal gap.