Herve Renard resigns from Morocco’s coach position

CAIRO, 21 July 2019: Morocco coach Herve Renard has announced his departure from the team after nearly three and a half years with the Atlas Lions.

"Morocco will always remain for me a country with which I lived incredible emotions," he wrote in a statement posted on Twitter. "I am proud of what we have achieved and how far we have managed to come. It is time for me to close this long and beautiful chapter of my life, not without emotion and sadness, but it is an inevitable decision taken well before AFCON 2019."

Renard, who won Afcon with Zambia (2012) and Ivory Coast (2015), had been in charge since February 2016.

"It is time for me to close this long and beautiful chapter of my life," said the Frenchman, 50.

"We had all hoped [for] better for the Afcon 2019 in Egypt. But this is football - it gives birth to the wildest hopes (after three wins in the first round [for the] first time in Afcon final tournament for Morocco), and brings us hard to the reality of a too-quick elimination on penalties!"