In an opinion piece entitled “When FIFA Suspended Morocco for Supporting Algeria” published in French Magazine “Jeune Afrique,” Moroccan historian and essayist Farid Bahri explores the historical tensions between Morocco and Algeria, particularly as manifest in football, highlighting this last week’s controversy over Morocco’s football jersey featuring the complete Moroccan map. He discusses the tiff in the historical context of FIFA’s ban on Morocco decades ago for supporting Algeria during its quest for independence.
“A couple of days ago, Algerians and Moroccans once again clashed over a football jersey. A few decades ago, amid the independence era, the kingdom was excluded by FIFA for its unwavering support for Algeria,” Bahri begins.
He traces the beginnings of football in Morocco to the 19th century colonial era, indicating its origins as the “baggage of the colonizers.” He highlights the role played by the French protectorate established in 1912, in integrating and spreading football within the African nation.
The very first Moroccan football club, “Club Athlétique Marocain (CAM),” was founded in 1902 in Casablanca, “the kingdom’s most French-speaking city,” Bahri writes. It was followed not long thereafter by the first well-known football association in 1913, “L’Union Sportive Marocaine (USM).”
The USM became a prominent sports club, managed by Frenchman Louis Andrieux, who had a political background, producing renowned players such as “the classic Moroccan soccer icon” Larbi Ben Barek, dubbed “the Black Pearl” and the world boxing champion Marcel Cerdan, nicknamed “The Moroccan Bomber,” according to the historian.
Moroccan football faced challenges during its nascent stages, including a three-year wait before the USM could participate in formal championships. Despite these hurdles, football gradually gained momentum in Moroccan society, with the establishment of the first Moroccan league in 1916 during World War I, and new clubs across several cities, including Tetouan, Tangier, Rabat, and Khouribga.
In 1926, Moroccan clubs joined the North African Competition. Moroccan players could finally compete against their Algerian and Tunisian counterparts. According to the author, the title “North African championship” is misleading as it is limited to French North Africa, the appellation suffering the influence of “colonial logic.”
In 1930, the North African Cup was established, and USM of Casablanca became the first Moroccan club to win an African Cup.
The connection between football and Morocco’s nationalist movement goes way back. With the founding of the Maghreb Fes Sports Association (MAS), individuals such as Hadj Driss Benzakour, who supported nationalist causes, played a significant role in highlighting the country’s growing link between football and politics. “The arrival of a new club on the football scene would have gone almost unnoticed if the political climate had not dictated the contrary,” Bahri asserts.
The MAS football team, committed to “promoting nationalism and independence in the kingdom,” marked the first time that soccer and politics were “united,” according to the writer. Sports and football, in particular, played a “vital role in seeking freedom and resisting French occupation.”
On March 2, 1956, Morocco announced the end of the French protectorate, and one month later on April 7 proclaimed the end of the Spanish one. On January 26, 1957, the Royal Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) came into being, replacing the Moroccan league that had been active under the protectorate.
Football had a significant political dimension across the Maghreb region. During Algeria’s war for independence from France in the late 1950s, for example, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) formed a “formidable team” that attracted talent from French clubs. The mission of the team was to carry the “revolutionary” message and utilize football as a tool of resistance to colonialism.
Having been founded in 1904 and suffered the ravages of the Second World War, FIFA was amid its renaissance and sensitive to government influence, however. It complied with the French demands to penalize countries that resisted colonialism. The result? French colonial political pressure on FIFA operated to exclude countries that hosted the FLN team from international competitions.
Morocco had provided support to the Algerian FLN by allowing the team to establish a base in its Eastern region and had offered further support by hosting in Morocco an Algerian tournament in honor of the resilient activist Djamila Bouhired. While these actions demonstrated Morocco’s support of its Algerian neighbor in its fight against colonialism, it had negative repercussions on the kingdom at the hands of FIFA.
In fact, both Morocco and Tunisia suffered suspensions for having supported the Algerian FLN team. Morocco was suspended from playing in FIFA’s second CAN scheduled in 1959.
Despite these clearly political repercussions, the Moroccan Federation continued its support for the Algerian independence movement, organizing football matches to raise funds for Algerian fighters.
On April 27, 1959, however, the suspensions of Tunisia’s and Morocco’s federations were lifted, and they became definitive members of FIFA at the Rome Congress the following year on August 22, 1960.
Thus, concludes Bahri, the FLN’s football policy succeeded in “the face of FIFA’s politicized soccer” in overcoming French colonialism with “the determined backing of Morocco,” highlighting a bitter irony that Algeria is now politicizing soccer against its former defender.