Morocco will leave Qatar disappointed but filled with pride at having written their names into the history books by becoming the first African team to reach the World Cup semifinals, their coach, Walid Regragui, said.

Morocco were beaten 2-0 by France on Wednesday and will go into a playoff for third place with Croatia while the French will face Argentina in the final.

“We realise that we made a great achievement already,” Regragui told journalists. “We know that from the media, social media, and on TV. We saw the pictures, and we saw that everyone was proud of us in our country.”

“We’re disappointed for the Moroccan people, we wanted to keep the dream alive. But we’re pleased with what we’ve achieved. We felt that we could have gone even further, but these small details help real champions, which we saw tonight, of course,” the 47-year-old added.

Regragui told his players he was proud of them.

Morocco supporters during Wednesday’s semifinal against France at Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor. (Photo: Heuler Andrey / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)

Sofiane Boufal during Morocco’s semifinal against France. (Photo: Heuler Andrey / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)

“His Majesty was also proud, the Moroccan people were proud,” he said. “I think the world as a whole is proud of this Moroccan team because we showed great desire. We worked hard, and we played honest, hard-working football.

“We’ve given a good image of Morocco and a good image of African football and that was also important for us, because we were representing our country and our continent.”

​Morocco, who came into the match with the best defensive record in the tournament, conceded from France’s first serious attack five minutes into the game.

“Today, if I have regrets, it’s the start of the game,” Regragui said. “We started quite poorly and we conceded a goal very quickly and that made the difference.

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“They allowed us to have quite a lot of possession, but we made too many mistakes to cause them problems.”

Regragui thought his team improved in the second half.

“We created a lot of opportunities, but unfortunately we weren’t clinical in the last third,” he said. “We tried everything to get a goal but congratulations to France. We’re going to support them now.”

France’s Kylian Mbappé is challenged by Achraf Dari of Morocco. (Photo: Heuler Andrey / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)

Kylian Mbappe of France and his friend Achraf Hakimi of Morocco exchange jerseys after the semifinal. (Photo: Jean Catuffe / Getty Images)

Morocco lost first-choice centre-back Nayef Aguerd in the warm-up after a recurrence of a hamstring injury, and their captain, Romain Saiss, left the pitch injured in the first half.

“In spite of all of the injuries that we had, the tiredness, we pulled out all the stops and we gave everything,” Regragui said.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Morocco’s Qatar World Cup heroics the result of years of effort — on and off the pitch”

He was pleased that his team had caused France problems.

“But I think physically, we came up short tonight. We had too many players who were 60% or 70%, and have been for a few games now,” said the France-born coach.

Morocco supporters look crushed after the loss to France. (Photo: Heuler Andrey / Eurasia Sport Images / Getty Images)

Hugo lioris of France and Achraf Hakimi of Morocco compete for the ball. (Photo: Etsuo Hara / Getty Images)

France’s Hugo Lloris goes up for the ball under pressure from Jawad El Yamiq of Morocco. (Photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)

“My players gave everything and they’ve gone as far as they could. I really wanted to rewrite the history books, but you can’t win a World Cup with miracles, you need to do it through hard work. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

The Moroccans now turn their attention to a battle for bronze against the Croats this Saturday. Reuters/DM