Delivered. It is an Algerian story as much as a French one, sporting and political. It traces the destinies of footballers who scored goals to exist, defeat the opponent and colonial barbarism, then faced racism and discrimination. It continues to be written on both sides of the Mediterranean, on decayed grounds as well as in some of the most legendary stadiums in Europe and Africa.
Each in their own way, Zinedine Zidane, current Real Madrid coach, and Djamel Belmadi, Algerian national team coach, perpetuate it. Both were born in France and studied in French clubs like more than 500 Algerian footballers. The first won the World Cup in 1998 with the France team and then the Champions League three times as a coach. The second became African champion in 2019 as coach of the Fennecs, the Algerian national team, in which he played before, just like many Franco-Algerian sportsmen.
This team crystallizes a part of the pride, the pains and the hopes of a people bruised by colonization, the war, and asphyxiated by a regime which confiscates the dreams of its youth. Football has survived the upheavals of history, accompanied it. Supporterism has made it a political art of protest, as the supporters of the Sports Union of the Medina of Algiers recently recalled in 2019. The song they wrote La Casa del Mouradia, with reference to the Spanish television series La Casa de papel and at the residence of the Head of State, has become one of the anthems of the peaceful revolution, started on February 22, 2019. Algerian football is a great game, social and migratory dynamics, but also the struggle for freedom, as told by the sports historian teaching at the University of Artois Stanislas Frenkiel, in France-Algeria immigrant football, a shared story.
Players go underground
In this captivating and documented book, Rachid Mekhloufi, former player of AS Saint-Etienne and the French team, gives the author some impressions of the period, that of the mid-1950s. “We are a group of footballers appreciated, loved by the French population. […] But each of us carries in our hearts a wound caused by colonialism. “ War is raging in Algeria. On the verge of wearing the tricolor jersey for the 1958 World Cup, Mr. Mekhloufi goes into hiding with other players.
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