To stay up to date with African news, subscribe to the “Monde Afrique” newsletter from this link. Every Saturday at 6 am, find a week of current events and debates treated by the editorial staff of “Monde Afrique”.
There is an air of Moroni in this Marseille restaurant in the Capelette district. Smile. Home. The simplicity. And the shining eyes of the cook – dressed in the green t-shirt of the Comoros football team – when he takes the order from Youssouf M’Changama, the most capped player of the national team. At the end of March, this archipelago off the coast of Mozambique, spread out over the Indian Ocean like a constellation, managed to qualify for the next finals of the African Cup of Nations (CAN), scheduled for Cameroon in January 2022. first in its young history.
“Before, nobody dared to wear our jersey. For the past few weeks, everyone has been putting him in Marseille. It is a great pride ”, proclaims Abdou Halidi, 32, from his stoves. And this feeling is understandable: a large part of internationals were born in the region of Marseille, which hosts the largest presence of Comorians in France: some 100,000 people. With poetry, Marseille is considered “the fifth island” of the country.
Since this qualification, the child of the city, Youssouf M’Changama, 30 years old and 40 selections with the Comoros – a name which means in Arabic “the islands of the Moon” -, has his head in the stars but has kept the crampons well on earth. No question of igniting the performance of the team: the defensive midfielder prefers to insist on a collective that has a lot “Sweated” since he was called to the national team in 2010.
That year, the Coelacanths (fleshy finned fish, nickname of the national team) participate for the first time in the qualifiers of the CAN. Until then, they were more used to tournaments in the islands of the Indian Ocean than on the mainland. The Comoros, a former French colony that became independent in 1975, only joined the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the African Football Confederation (CAF) in 2005.
“The first training, we did it on dirt. We slept two or three in the same bed, because there were not enough mosquito nets in the rooms ”, recalls with a smile Youssouf M’Changama, who plays in Guingamp, in Ligue 2: “Today we have a new stadium. I don’t need to say anything else to talk about how far we’ve come. “
“Not taken seriously”
In a café in Martigues (Bouches-du-Rhône), Nadjim Abdou, 36, asks for a fruit juice. This big fellow with an unchanging smile was born in a district not far from here and, after a decade of treading the English lawns, he now defends the colors of the city’s club in National 2. The captain of the Comoros also remembers of the first moments in selection. “In the morning, when we got on our bus to go to the training ground, it was the taxi: we stopped to pick up people on the way. It was the colony ”, he says with a burst of laughter.
The change took place in 2014 with the arrival of a new coach, Amir Abdou, and a friendly match organized in Martigues against Burkina Faso (1-1). To bring the team to a higher level, the quadra, which also coaches FC Nouadhibou, the champion team of Mauritania, will rely more on its diaspora – and less on players from clubs in the archipelago -, such as successfully made it Algeria. Thus, during the match against Togo (0-0) which validated the ticket for the next CAN, all the players of the starting eleven were born in France (two in Mayotte), including five in Marseille – six with the coach .
“In 2010, I was the only pro and there were a few expatriates, today it’s the other way around. Binational players, we make the team grow ”, emphasizes Nadjim Abdou. “After that of the coach, we tried to bring the requirement of the very high level that we had in our respective clubs”, says Youssouf M’Changama.
El Fardou midfielder Ben Nabouhane plays for Red Star Belgrade and has appeared in the Europa League this season; defender Bendjaloud Youssouf started his career at FC Nantes; Faïz Mattoir is the striker of AC Ajaccio, in Ligue 2; Rafidine Abdullah was trained at the Olympique de Marseille… In 2010, the Comoros were vegetating at the 186e place in the FIFA ranking (out of 208 nations); today, the Coelacanths are 131es.
“At the start of our adventure, we weren’t taken seriously. We could count on the diaspora ”, welcomes Ben Amir Saadi. The cheeky 46-year-old man – he runs at least one marathon a week – was until 2019 the manager of the national team. Sitting on the terrace of a café in the Old Port, in Marseille, he recounts the pleasure of having seen the selection grow day by day. “In ten years, we have gone from the depths to qualifying for the CAN, sometimes with the same players, he claims. It is unique in the world. “
“We had our revenge”
For Ben Amir Saadi, there is also another source of pride, that of having somehow healed a childhood injury. Minots, in the popular districts of Marseille or Martigues, the players remember that at the time of the CAN, “All the friends were represented by Morocco or Algeria, and we nothing”, recalls Nadjim Abdou.
“There was a lot of rooming. When we were young, the Comoros did not exist ”, adds Youssouf M’Changama. “When I said ‘Comoros’, I was told: “Cameroon?”, Says Ben Amir Saadi. I was kicked out of college for three days because I added four points in the history books to indicate the islands of my country. ” With the qualification, “We had our revenge”, confides the captain of the Coelacanths: “We hoisted the Comorian flag on the roof of Africa. “
At home, the supporters did not hide their joy at” to exist “ finally in the midst of the great African nations thanks to the “Je-Come”, a nickname given by the Comorians to their compatriots living in France or elsewhere in Europe, which symbolize success and convey a positive image of the archipelago abroad. Now, everyone is waiting for the CAN and some start dreaming of crossing Algeria. “Comorians and Algerians are the most important populations in Marseille, explains Abdou Nadjim. Algeria-Comoros at CAN? We can say that it would be the Marseille derby. “
Tensions between the players and the federation
The Comorian internationals resumed training in their respective clubs at the end of June. They had hoped to meet again at a rally of the national team scheduled for the month, but it was, to their surprise, canceled by the federation. And in recent days, the rag has been burning between executive players from the Comoros and their leaders. On June 24, they were not called to face Palestine. Consequence: the Coelacanths lost heavily (5-1), depriving them of participation in the Arab Cup, organized in Qatar in November.
In a press release, these pillars of the selection denounced ” a lack of respect “, a list of “Players summoned on the fly”, and require their federation to look into the issue of travel conditions, accommodation or bonuses … “We are angry because the federation does not put us in the best conditions to prepare for the final phase of the hard-won CAN”, they add. The authority responded by qualifying this text as “Regrettable document” and announced that she would take the “Decisions that are imperative internally for the good of our national team”. The next gathering of Coelacanths is scheduled for September in the Comoros.