Vahid Halilhodzic isn’t going to the World Cup.
He didn’t go to the 2010 World Cup either. Or the 2018 World Cup.
Those simple facts don’t make him unique — what does is that Halilhodzic managed teams that qualified for all three of those, but was dismissed from his post before the tournament on each occasion.
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Managers have been sacked during the tournament before, but somehow swinging the axe in the interim period between qualification and the big show itself feels even crueller. “Thanks for doing the hard yards pal, but someone else will take it from here.”
And, as you might expect, Halilhodzic is not happy about it.
“It is a true sporting and moral injustice. It’s immoral. It is me who qualified and someone prevents me from going.
“It is the dream of all managers to manage at the World Cup. It’s three times that I was prevented from going, for different reasons.
“It’s something that disappoints me very, very much. At the moment, everyone speaks about the World Cup, about the team. I worked three years to build this team, I made lots of sacrifices, and then I am moved aside.
“It’s difficult to accept.”
Halilhodzic was born in 1952, in what is now Bosnia. He made his name as a player in France, winning Ligue 1 with Nantes in 1983, but it’s as a coach that he is best known. He tried to start coaching in his homeland, but this was at the time of the war in Yugoslavia. So he left, going from club to club to observe different coaching methods, sleeping in his car as he went.
He started at Beauvais in France, went on to win the African Champions League with Raja Casablanca and took Lille from the second tier to the European Champions League, before moving into the international game with Ivory Coast in 2008.
It was with them he qualified for the first time, guiding a team featuring Didier Drogba, the Toure brothers, Salomon Kalou and others to South Africa — or so he thought.
“The team had great, great potential. I was very saddened by the decision (to sack me). It was not taken by the president of the football federation. We were eliminated in the quarter-final of the African Cup of Nations. The government was not happy with that. It was just before the presidential election.
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“It was political and the players were very sad that I did not go with them to the World Cup. It was my only defeat in 24 matches. Only defeat. After extra time. And the president of the country decided to make a change. It’s politics…”
His replacement was Sven-Goran Eriksson, parachuted in a few months before the tournament. But having been drawn in a tough group, they drew with Portugal, lost to Brazil and were out in the first round.
It should also be noted that the AFCON he managed Ivory Coast at was 2010, when the Togo team bus was attacked with three killed. Halilhodzic has said in the past the attack had a big impact on his team, which is understandable.
After a brief spell with Dinamo Zagreb, where he won the league but left after a row with owner Zdravko Mamic, it was back to the international circuit, back to Africa, this time with Algeria.
This is the exception — the only World Cup that Halilhodzic qualified for and was actually left to take the team to the tournament. And not just take the team there: Algeria reached the second round for the first (and to date only) time, narrowly losing to eventual champions Germany.
“Everyone who watched the match said Algeria deserved to win. We were given a standing ovation. All the (German) staff and players congratulated us.
“The match was in Porto Allegre. Afterwards, I went to buy some souvenirs, and people recognised me in the shopping centre. People were shaking me by the hand, chanting ‘Algeria, Algeria’.
“I will never forget our return to Algiers, there were several hundreds of thousands of people who came, chanting. It was so warm, it was exceptional. A moment I will never forget. We played a style of football which was surprisingly effective, with beauty, a bit of audacity.”
Halilhodzic was offered a new contract, but turned it down. The following year he took the Japan job, and so began another cycle. “Japan is another world. In three years, I had no problem with the players — their behaviour was exceptional, application, training, work. It was almost robotic.”
The issues, according to Halilhodzic, were elsewhere. “With Japan… the financiers — they were not happy.
“I was encouraged not to take certain players to the World Cup, and to take certain others because they were part of the long-term marketing plan. They said simply that I could be sacked because of that. I must take these players to the World Cup.”
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Halilhodzic doesn’t name the players in question, but he says he would not be swayed. The Japanese Football Association, however, completely deny this happened, adding that the decision was made “from a football perspective”.
He was sacked for a second time before a World Cup and at the tournament, under Akira Nishino, Japan qualified for the second round and came within minutes of beating Belgium in arguably the 2018 World Cup’s most dramatic game.
A stint back at Nantes followed, which ended after — get this — disagreements with the club’s ownership. Then in 2019, he took the Morocco job, again leading his team to qualification for the World Cup, which was achieved despite another falling out, this time between him and two of their star players, Hakim Ziyech and Noussair Mazraoui.
Ziyech’s absence seemed to centre on a couple of games in Africa Cup of Nations qualification in the spring of 2021: he played badly against Mauritania and was left on the bench for the following fixture against Burundi, but afterwards wasn’t picked again.
Mazraoui was dropped, according to him, because of a hydration-related disagreement. He said in 2021: “During training, it was very hot and the coach asked us to drink every five minutes. During one of the breaks, I didn’t drink, because I wasn’t thirsty anymore. He asked me to drink again, which I politely refused, but he insisted. To calm the situation, Romain Saiss gave me a bottle of water, but I poured it on the floor. That’s how the problem started.”
Neither was picked for AFCON in Cameroon at the start of 2022, where Morocco reached the quarter-finals, beaten after extra time by finalists Egypt.
The general consensus seemed to be that Halilhodzic had done a pretty decent job, considering he essentially had to rip up the squad and start again following a series of retirements around the time he took over. But the football was rarely pretty, and his popularity was mixed. Plus some fans still yearned for Ziyech: at the end of the final World Cup qualifier, a 4-1 win over DR Congo, the Chelsea forward’s name was chanted in the stands.
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The prospect of Morocco travelling to the World Cup without Ziyech and Mazraoui was the root cause of pre-World Cup dismissal No 3, in August. That’s according to Halilhodzic, anyway.
“We did a great job for three years, with a completely new and very young team that got great results. The feeling was good.
But Halilhodzic says the government “wanted certain players included that I moved aside from the national team because of indiscipline, they didn’t participate in qualifiers, the team that got great results, in eight matches we won seven and had one bad match (1-1 draw with DR Congo)”.
He adds: “We were very effective, we were building something strong,” but he was “put under pressure, pressure from media, certain people, I don’t know who. I let them know certain players were posing problems and I wasn’t OK with that”.
The 70-year-old wanted harmony in his group.
“When you see who poses problems for the group, it’s important to the cohesion of the group, spirit of the group, it’s more important than individuality,” he continues. “Someone doesn’t accept the behaviour of the group, the rules of the group… they can’t be part of the group.
“It is not just Hakim Ziyech. Other players who posed problems were dropped. Each manager these days can have problems. Look at Manchester United. See Cristiano Ronaldo. He posed problems. He was dropped. It’s just like that.”
The argument in his favour would be that perhaps the abrasive and uncompromising qualities that lead him to fall out with people are the same ones that make him a good manager. And going on results at least, there’s little doubt that he is a good manager.
But in the end, it can’t be a coincidence that Halilhodzic has qualified for four World Cups but has only been permitted to manage at one of them.
Halilhodzic has explanations and figures of blame to point fingers at, but it is quite tempting to paraphrase that famous headline from The Onion: ‘No way to prevent this, says only international coach this keeps happening to’. Both the Moroccan and Ivory Coast FAs did not respond to a request for comment.
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All that said, he is one of those characters that makes football richer, more entertaining. A man who has taken charge of so many nations, and clubs, succeeding with some, failing with others, but rarely dull at any of them.
“I have lots of things to say,” he adds, when asked to reflect on his career. “We need months to speak about all of it because there are four World Cups qualifications, three domestic titles, I have participated in the Champions League.
“I would need a book to tell it all… maybe one day.
“I am very passionate about football, it has given me so much — so much joy, satisfaction, knowledge. But there have been moments that were difficult, incomprehensible. Like qualifying three times for the World Cup and not going. One month before the World Cup for a bizarre reason… that shows that life can be unjust, and so can football.”
(Top photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)