Morocco coach Reynald Pedros has urged his players to keep believing after they were thumped 6-0 by powerhouse Germany in their opening Group H game at the Women’s World Cup on Monday.
The Germans were ruthless in punishing Moroccan errors and provided a huge wake-up call for the north African side, but Pedros believes they will take the lessons from the defeat into their second game against South Korea on Sunday.
“We need to stay focused and concentrated on the competition. We still have two games to play. Our objective is to as quickly as possible get back to work and get our heads down,” Pedros said.
“We also want to look at what was missing and what we weren’t able to do. We will prepare based on that for the South Korea game.
“Germany was superior to us, it was David v Goliath. We made mistakes. Against a better team it is not a surprise to lose, but we did not think we would concede six goals.”
Pedros also said he was pleased with the first half display from his side, which saw them trail 2-0 at the break, before the wheels came off in the second period.
“The first half went very well,” he said. “We were trailing 2-0 and we could have come back into the game. We could have avoided some of the goals we conceded (in the second half), but we gave it our all in a high-level competition.
“We are ambitious, we would have liked to do better, but we were coming up against a team that is at an extremely high level.”
Conceded a goal within a minute of the restart was a killer blow, according to Pedros.
“What really hurt was the third goal we conceded at the start of the second half. It was from our mistake and then it became hard to keep our heads up.
“But we are here to learn and need to have a little bit more experience and quality. We will stay positive and move forward.”
