The Algerian football team, reigning African champion, won the Arab Cup for the first time by winning (2-0) against Tunisia, Saturday, December 18, in Qatar, at the end of extra time.
At the Al-Bayt stadium in Al-Khor, in northeastern Qatar, the Algerian Greens were delivered by the replacement Amir Sayoud (99e) then by Yacine Brahimi (120e+5), in front of crowded stands of more than 60,000 spectators, including the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani.
The Fennecs, who have not lost a match during the Arab Cup, had, like all the nations involved, to do without their players playing in Europe. Algeria had won the 2019 African Cup of Nations, after twenty-nine years of a long wait since its first continental coronation.
The tournament took place in six of the eight stadiums that will host 2022 World Cup matches; the final took place on Qatar’s National Day and one year to the day before the World Cup final. Earlier today, the host nation beat Egypt on penalties (5-4, 0-0 at the end of regulation time), advancing to third place in the first Arab Cup to stand under the FIFA umbrella.
Fifty-five arrests in France
The Algerian victory was celebrated in several cities of France, in particular in Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Toulouse or to the harbor.
The celebrations sometimes gave rise to clashes with the police. Fifty-five people were arrested Saturday evening and overnight from Saturday to Sunday in France during supporters’ rallies, according to police sources, Sunday.
According to a final report on Sunday morning, in Paris, 32 people were arrested and 432 were fined for non-compliance with the prefectural decree which prohibited access to the Champs-Elysées to supporters or for traffic violations, reported on Twitter the Paris Police Prefecture.
After the first peaceful celebrations in the Parisian district of Barbes, several hundred Algerian supporters gathered on the sidewalks of the Champs-Elysées and the traffic was very dense. During the night, Agence France-Presse noted that the police were charging supporters to force them to disperse. The police chief announced Thursday the establishment on the avenue of a security perimeter within which the presence of supporters was prohibited.
In the rest of France, 23 people were arrested, including 14 in particular in Roubaix, where a thousand supporters celebrated Algeria’s victory, according to a police source. They were 2,000 in Lille, where the police arrested two people, said this source. In Lyon, seven police officers were slightly injured and one person arrested, according to the Rhône prefecture and the police source.