Nayef Aguerd missed Morocco's 2-0 semi-final World Cup defeat to France due to the flu, manager Walid Regragui has confirmed.
The West Ham United defender picked up an injury in the Round of 16 win over Spain and was ruled out of the quarter-final tie against Portugal, with his place for Wednesday night's match in doubt.
His inclusion in the starting line-up was a surprise but when the game kicked off, he was nowhere to be seen on the pitch with Achraf Dari starting ahead of him after replacing Hammers' summer signing after the warm-up.
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Romain Saiss, another player who started despite being injured, lasted 20 minutes and was substituted after France had taken the lead through Theo Hernandez.
Speaking after the match, Regragui said that Aguerd was recovering from the flu and was unable to play and his absence, alongside Saiss not being fully fit, led to a slow start.
“Until the last minute we weren’t sure, we waited until the last minute to see if Romain could play. He is such an important player for us, our captain,” Regragui said. “Nayef was recovering from flu and wanted to play as well, I thought it was best to play with three defenders so they didn’t have too much to run at.
“We made a lot of mistakes and then Romain had to go off and we changed to a four-man defence and actually played better. I have no regrets about the decision. Nayef’s absence was difficult and all of these little things meant we got off to quite a poor start, you learn from your mistakes, I do as well. If all our squad was fit we could have caused them even more problems.
“At a World Cup, this was one step too far, not in terms of quality or tactics but physically, we had too many players at 60-70 per cent.”
Randal Kolo Muani put the game to bed late in the second half, with Aguerd not yet confirmed to play in the third-place play-off against Croatia and could feature for West Ham in the Boxing Day fixture league leaders Arsenal.
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