RABAT, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Africa Cup of \u200cNations hosts Morocco have been warned not to get tooconfident about their chances \u200cin Sunday\u2019s last-16 clash against underdogs Tanzania, with coach Walid Regragui saying lack of \u200chumility has cost them in the past.<\/p>\n
Morocco are the top ranked team at the tournament and runaway favourites and look to have an easy passage into the quarter-finals at the expense of Tanzania, who squeezed into the knockout \u200dstage among the four best third placed finishers.<\/p>\n
They did so \u200dwithout winning a game and their \u200ctwo-point haul from three Group C matches is the lowest tally of points in tournament history \u200dfor \u200ba team advancing out of the first round and into the last-16.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hear that we are the overwhelming favourites, that we should win easily, and everyone says that \u2060if Morocco do not win, it is a failure, that \u200cif Morocco does not win easily, it is a failure,\u201d Regragui said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy job and the job \u2060of the staff and \u200dthe senior players is to keep our feet on the ground and remember why Morocco has not won the Cup of Nations in 50 years. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have not won it because I think that at \u200dsome point, we lacked humility in every competition, and \u200cwe must not fall into that trap.” <\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s only previous Cup of Nations success was in 1976 and in recent editions they have crashed out to unfancied opposition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will keep our feet on the ground, we will respect this Tanzanian team,\u201d the coach added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are a team that is growing, they are developing their infrastructure, they are developing their league with two big clubs, and they have very good local players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t be an easy match. We will play to our strengths \u200cso as not to give them any hope of causing an upset. There are always surprises, and it is up to us to make sure that tomorrow there is no chance for this team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tanzania \u200bare competing at only a fourth Cup of Nations tournament and are yet to win in 12 matches played since they first appeared at the 1980 finals.<\/p>\n
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Tangier; editing by Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RABAT, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Africa Cup of \u200cNations hosts Morocco have been warned not to get tooconfident…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[638,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tanzania","8":"tag-na","9":"tag-tanzania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}