Mohamed Ouahbi

Mohamed Ouahbi is the head coach of Morocco at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, promoted from the U-20 set-up on 5 March 2026 in succession to Walid Regragui. Born in the Brussels commune of Schaerbeek on 7 September 1976 to a family from Nador, he is the first dual Belgian-Moroccan coach of the Atlas Lions and never played professionally — his entire career has been on the touchline.

Ouahbi spent more than two decades inside Belgian youth football, first at Maccabi Brussels and then for 18 years across the academy structures of RSC Anderlecht, where he coached every level from U-9 to U-21, served as a first-team assistant in 2015–16, and eventually became the club's youth coordinator. He won the Belgian U-17 championship with Anderlecht in 2018.

The Royal Moroccan Football Federation appointed him head coach of Morocco U-20 in 2022. Three years later, on 19 October 2025 in Santiago, his side beat Argentina 2-0 in the FIFA U-20 World Cup final in Chile — Morocco's first ever world title at any age category. The same generation had finished runners-up at the 2025 U-20 Africa Cup of Nations, and Ouahbi was nominated for the 2025 CAF Coach of the Year award.

In early 2026 he was also entrusted with the Morocco U-23 side, and when Walid Regragui's senior project was wound down following an indifferent qualification finish, the federation handed Ouahbi the senior chair. Morocco are placed in Group C and arrive in North America as one of the tournament's compelling stories: a coach who has never managed a senior club asking a star-laden squad — Achraf Hakimi, Brahim Díaz, the Diaz/Bono generation — to play the bold, possession-led football he honed in the academies of Anderlecht.