The African Nations Championship (CHAN) does not start until next Friday but the masquerade has already begun.
By dint of watching the military parades of the People’s National Army, Algerians have become great connoisseurs of the seventh art and their football leaders are no exception to this rule.
As the African Nations Championship for Local Players (CHAN) approaches (January 13-February 4), Algerian football players have graced the continent in recent weeks with a real festival that brings together several cinematographic genres.
The story began with a film directed by the Algerian Minister of Youth and Sports, who seems to worship Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense. While the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) conditioned, on December 27, the participation of the U23 Cubs in the Pan-African tournament on the opening of the airspace – at RAM, the official carrier of the national team –, Abderezak Sebgag told beIN Sports that the response from the Algerian authorities would fall on the 30th of the same month.
This scenario, intended to strain the nerves of the FRMF leaders, has turned into a psychological drama for the military-political apparatus, which finds itself caught in the trap it has set itself by breaking off its relations and closing its borders with Morocco.
Today, the country is preparing for a competition without the most sacred team and double defending champion. The record of the Atlas Lions also seems to irritate our friends at APS, the junta’s official press agency, which retraced the history of CHAN without mentioning Morocco once. If that isn’t science fiction!
And the musical film? Without fanfare, but with an unbearable high-pitched voice, the president of the local CHAN organizing committee, Rachid Oukali, has been singing the same refrain for several days: “Fouzi Lekjaâ wants to derail the opening ceremony by scheduling the draw fate of the Club World Cup on January 13. FYI, mini-Tebboune, the dates of the draws for FIFA competitions are decided by the body chaired by Gianni Infantino.
The prize for best horror film goes to Hakim Medane, member of the board of directors of the Algerian Football Federation (FAF), who on Tuesday January 3 martyred the English language to welcome the Ghana team. .
Comedy finally, with the reception of the Senegal team which recalls that reserved for the Algerian team crowned during the Arab Cup, or for the French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. On the menu: peanuts, pastries and a bit of folklore. A basic, caricatural and almost boring show…
Latest scandal? Well no, the script had another outcome and the word “End” was not about to appear on the screen yet. To everyone’s surprise and without warning, the film plunges the Lions of Teranga into the pitiless entrails of a terrifying and trying thriller: the bus that was going to take them to their hotel.
An old, dilapidated and ugly vehicle, like the regime in place and which oddly resembles the buses used by this same junta to transport sub-Saharan migrants before abandoning them in the middle of the desert, more precisely in Tamanrasset, in the extreme south of the country.
The CHAN does not begin until next Friday, but the masquerade has already begun.