From chants from the stands to literature and cinema, football is not just entertainment. It is a social phenomenon which deeply irrigates Algerian culture.
For a long time, out of feeling and reflex of identification, songs and slogans in praise of clubs or stars have always resonated in the stadium stands. We raise our voices in front of a spectacular feint, a breathtaking dribble or when the ball shakes the wooden nets.
Football, a source of musical inspiration
Far from the stadium, the king of sport is not confined to the world of song. Of course, there are countless songs celebrating a club. Hadj M’rizek composed in the colonial context where the colors are not neutral an anthem for Mouloudia of Algiers, “the most famous club in North Africa”. Mourad Djafri embraces his passion for the rival USMA club to which the master El Hachemi Guerrouabi also dedicated a song. Meskoud proclaimed his love for the colors of the CRB in “Enti Lahbiba”. Previously Nora, in Ya Riadhi – Oh sportive – launches a cry of recognition to the one who makes you happy.
The JSK appears in the repertoires of Aït Menguellet, Matoub, Allaoua, Amour Abdenour and other artists. Houari Benchenet, known for his amorous coos, still composed a song for Mouloudia d’Oran on a karkabou rhythm.
Who can ignore or forget Djibouha Yalawled from the group “El Bahara” whose lyrics are as famous as the stars of the 1982 World Cup? The victories and qualifications of the national team are always accompanied by a flowering of circumstantial songs, and the current participation in the World Cup is no exception. Just listen. On platforms and radios, to encourage the Greens or express pride.
A social and political phenomenon in essence, football, a parable of courage and elegance, has always nourished the verve of singers and writers.
Football in Algerian literature
In 1995, in his novel “Life at the Place”, published by Grasset, in 1997, Rachid Boudjedra made Yamaha the favorite supporter of the CRB who was shot down by terrorists, a symbol of the refusal of the deadly ideology of his assassins. It is also through the final of the Coupe de France, May 27, 1957, between the clubs of Toulouse and Angers, Boudjedra recounted the events of the assassination of collaborator Ali Chekkal in the “Winner of the Cup”.
If we do not count the books which evoke the history of clubs of the footballers themselves, the late Hamid Zouba and the hero of Gijon Cerbah have taken up the pen to evoke their career.
Des séquences mémorables au cinéma
In the cinema, the king of sport has inspired memorable sequences. It’s in “Omar Gatlato” who with his group of friends went to the Stade du 5-Juillet to attend a supercharged MCA match. And Hadj Abderahmane makes us laugh in the penalty.
In “Kahla ou beida” by Abderahmane Bouguermouh, released in 1980, play is omnipresent. Against a backdrop of attachment to the Entente de Sétif, the director of “La colline de la colline”, adapted from the novel by Mouloud Mammeri, who spent his childhood in the city of Kermali, delivers a bittersweet and very poetic chronicle on a family whose son Ali plays as a center forward in the club fetish of the city.
Laadi Flici peppered his columns with references to football matches which were, in the colonial era, political confrontations against the pied-noir teams.
A growing sports literature
More recently “La footballeuse”, a novel by Nadjib Stambouli, describes the excesses in the professional environment where shenanigans alter the sporting spirit.
Sports literature is available in numerous works including those of Hamid Grine, Bessol, Mouloud Djazouli. A whole anthology is devoted to the FLN football team, among others “The dribblers of independence”, by Michel Naït Challal, preface by Rachid Mekhloufi, and “Independence as the only goal” by Abderahim Kader. Who said you can’t care about football?
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R.HammoudiÂ
