An Olympic gold medal for Algeria

I wondered whether I ashould assign this post to the category ‘Noteworthy Algerians‘, but decided not to because, even though obtaining a Gold medal at the Olympics is certainly a noteworthy achievement, most Algerian athletes and sportspeople are not noteworthy in that they do not have a sustained output. Take Hassiba Boulmerqa or Noureddine Morceli for example. What have they achieved since winning a Gold medal in the 1500 m in 1992 (Barcelona Olympics) and 1996 (Atlanta Olympics) respectively?

Going back to the topic of this post,

BouteflikaDRS vs. CNCD, a boring game

The first thing I did when I started this blog was to add “Algeria” and “Algérie” in the tag surfer of the blog’s dashboard. I can tell you that there are very few WordPress blogs with these two tags and very often the tag surfer page is empty.
There was just one occurrence when many blogs had mentioned Algeria, and that was around the 2010 World Cup, because Algeria was to play against England and the USA.

A second occurrence started these past weeks with the uprisings/revolts of Egypt and Tunisia. Plenty of blogs tag “Algeria”, and all were looking forward to this day. It’s not the World Cup but many men and women had a sudden interest in our country as they had decided it was Next in the list after Tunisia and Egypt.
The messages on Twitter are similar and everybody’s forwarding news reports, rumours, etc.

Question: Does patriotism still play a role in the World Cup?

The World Cup is an interesting tournament on many accounts; for one thing it involves football, the most popular sport on the planet (thus giving it a greater impact factor than say the Olympic Games) and then it is about national teams competing against each other making it symbolic of nationalism or patriotism. This is probably why some anthropologists, evolutionary psychologists and sociologists have argued that football has become a substitute to ancient war epics which helped males let off their testosterone charges and feel useful the best way they know how (i.e. by being agressive). In a world where wars don’t need so much blood and flesh anymore, football becomes a suitable battlefield for all sorts of conflicts: political, psychological, sociological, patriotic, nationalistic, religious even, you name it. Of course, philosophically, sport is meant to unify and help people transcend their tribal instincts by promoting noble traits such as fairplay, modesty, respect and endurance, but in reality and especially in hugely popular sports where lots of money is involved, the facts on the ground are often diametrically opposed to the philosophical ideal behind sport.

I was too young to be capable of any deep analysis of the 1982 World Cup performance of the Algerian national team, but it seems to me that

England vs. Algeria : the dreaded game

Dear oh dear! The worst case scenario has materialized following the first match defeat on the hands (or rather feet) of those Slovenians. Although our team did outplay their Slovenian counterparts in the first half, the Slovenians came back in the second half and delivered a footballistic crusade on the Algerian team’s side of the pitch: statistics had to favor them to score a goal as Chaouchi couldn’t hang on forever (if it weren’t for him, we’d have had to lump down at least 3 more goals). Now, qualifying for the next round would be more complicated, it’s very frustrating because the Greens have stupidly let an easy and perfectly feasible 3 precious points slip through their toes. I was initially relieved to see a significantly better performance by our team than the dismal way they have played in the friendly matches. However, after watching the other games and how other teams have played

Algeria vs. Slovenia, the key game

Nelson Mandela couldn’t attend the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 World Cup after the tragic death of his great-granddaughter, and he also missed the opening game (1-1) which opposed his country to Mexico. The South-African team had the honour to score the first goal of the competition, and it seems it wouldn’t need the referees’ help to qualify for the next round (the host country’s team has never been eliminated in the groups’ round).

So far and after five games, the French team proved once again that it is unable to score (0-0 against Uruguay); the Koreans burst the Greek bubble (a well deserved 2-0 preventing the Greek population from forgetting their financial crisis); and the talented but young Nigerians did well against Maradona‘s team (0-1) even if the latter didn’t give it their all.

Last warm-up match today against UAE

Our national football team is playing against the UAE team in Fürth, north of Nuremberg (Germany) this afternoon at 17:00 Algerian local time. The familiar and popular stars of the Fennecs such as Bougherra, Yahya and Matmour will be back on the pitch for this match and this will be the last chance for coach Saâdane to test the team before the World Cup kick-off which will be next week. More info and comments on the event can be found here. Apparently, Mbolhi will take (our national hero) Chaouchi‘s position at the goals and Mansouri will still play in midfield (next to Lahcen) despite his comical performance in the previous match against Ireland. Check out this superb shot by Mansouri (at around 3:50 minutes into the video), for a minute there, I thought it was David Beckham playing for us! It’s a miracle he missed the goals with a shot like that and the (irritating) commentator seems to have found it excellent too! (moumtaza men Yazid Mansouri! he screamed!). The video below summarizes the highlights of the previous match against Ireland:

Ireland vs. Algeria: World Cup warm-up match tonight

The ‘Desert Foxes‘ (Les Fennecs) arrived yesterday morning in Dublin where they will play their second World Cup warm-up match against the ‘Fur Foxes‘. The first one was against the Serbian ‘White Eagles’ and took place in the 5th of July stadium in Algiers on the 3rd March 2010. The match will take place in the RDS stadium in Dublin this evening. More info on the teams and where you can watch the match can be found in this post. Good luck to our national team! Maâk yal Khadra, Diri hala! Here’s one of my favorite supporters’ songs, feel free to attach your favorite supporters’ songs in the comments to encourage The (Magic) Greens for tonight’s match!:

One, Two, Three. Viva l’Algérie!

Post-publication edit:

Those of you who have not watched the match can do so on youtube via these links (10 parts): part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9 and part 1o

FIFA’s verdict against Egypt for pelting Algerian football team bus

Here’s the official statement which was made public on May 18th (emphasis added):

The FIFA Disciplinary Committee, chaired by Marcel Mathier, decided today, 18 May, in Zurich to impose a ban on the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) whereby the “A” representative team of Egypt will play the first two home matches of the preliminary competition for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ at a location at least 100 kilometres away from Cairo.

In addition, the EFA will have to pay a fine of CHF 100,000. The FIFA Disciplinary Committee took this decision after determining that the EFA had failed to

Algerian handball national teams are playing in Egypt

Yes, it’s the truth and things are going quite well for them.

Remember when after the 13 to 18 November events (using this terminology gives them a kind of importance) between Egypt and Algeria, the former decided to withdraw from organising the African handball championship if Algeria was to participate. Algerians on their side not only confirmed their participation but also proposed to host the competition in case the Egyptians were serious about their threats.
Now (even before actually) we know it was only talks and Cairo is hosting the 19th African handball championship.

So both males and females national teams are competing in Egypt. Things didn’t start well for our very young girls as they were defeated twice (reminding me of our football NT against Malawi) whereas the men confirmed their African rank and easily won all their games. But the girls reacted positively and made us forget the first games.

Courtesy of DZHand.net

Today both teams are qualified for the semi-finals after beating the very dangerous Angolan men (26-19) and the Congolese girls (27-26). Both teams will play their next games against their Tunisian counterparts: the girls in the semi-final, and the boys in the last groups-round match.

As usual, there were some issues around this event like the Algerian delegation using an Egyptair flight instead of Air Algerie, the Algerian delegation being tightly “protected” by the Egyptian police until Bouteflika asked the Egyptian government to remove any special precautions, and of course the problems with NesmaTV who acquired the CAN television rights making it impossible for the ENTV to broadcast them.

Anyway, this was a short post for the sake of fairness (these teams deserve as equal consideration as the football one) and because I like handball almost as much as football. Good luck to our teams in the upcoming games; and who knows, a qualification for the WC is possible. Rana djayine ya Mandela (I know it won’t be in South Africa).

One Two Three, Viva l’Algerie

Thank you Mali… and sorry mates

Algeria just qualified for the quarterfinals of the CAN after their tie (0-0) with Angola, and Mali’s victory over Malawi (3-1).

The first half was quite good with both teams playing seriously, and each one had a very good opportunity to score. But the second leg seemed more like a training session. It was like both teams decided to let go after they knew of the other game’s score. I have to say that I didn’t like it and felt kind of uneasy, esp. during the last ten minutes.
Sorry for Mali who “helped” us qualify and good luck to them in the future.

The Algerian team didn’t play well in the first round, scoring only one goal and receiving three Malawian goals. The three games proved our lack of coherence among other things. They also showed once again that the press and supporters usually have a very short memory. They indeed qualified Saadane of the worst adjectives after having called him Cheikh Saadane, and the players suddenly became the worst ever after having been our heroes and… martyrs.

Anyway, now we have to prepare for our next game on Jan. 24 against either Ivory Coast or Burkina Faso. I am suspecting we’d get the former ones, but we will know tomorrow for sure.
Hope the injured players will feel better and Saadane and his staff will come up with a plan to improve the team’s performances.