ABSTRACT
As France’s nearest and most assimilated colonial territory, Algeria would only be surrendered belatedly and with great reluctance. Football was variously mobilised by both coloniser and colonised over the last half century of the French presence in North Africa: as a focus for a distinctive settler identity; as a means of asserting Algeria’s aspirations to nationhood; as a site of inter-ethnic contestation and often violent confrontation; as a theatre for insurgency during the war of independence (1954–1962); and as the most striking manifestation in the cultural sphere of nationalist sentiment, through the establishment in 1958 of the celebrated football team of the Front de Libération Nationale. Football would also be central to post-independence representations of the Algerian state, as the FLN sought to legitimise its regime and exert soft power within the Arab-Islamic world and more broadly. This long-term strategy was in evidence during the 2006 ‘state visit’ to his parents’ homeland of the most famous footballing product of the Algerian diaspora, Zinedine Zidane. The broader impacts of migration are considered by way of a conclusion, including notably the phenomenon of reverse migration as exemplified by the makeup of Algerian national teams at the 2010 and 2014 World Cup competitions.
