A day after the announcement of the departure of Djamel Belmadi, the Algerian Football Federation activated several options to succeed him, one of them leading to Zinedine Zidane.

Algerian national football is going through a very complicated period. Beaten to the wire by Mauritania(1-0), the Fennecs were eliminated from the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast in the group stage, the second elimination in a row at this stage of the competition after 2021. This is the worst series of matches without a victory in the continental tournament in the history of the country.

A premature exit which notably cost coach Djamel Belmadi his position, who even went so far as to declare war on the Algerian Federation. Enough to force the latter to work on the different avenues to succeed the one who led the Greens during their second continental coronation in 2019. And to replace him, the Algerian Football Federation very quickly thought of a prestigious coach and free from everything contract: Zinedine Zidane.

Indeed, according to the latest information from L’Equipe, the president of the high authority of Algerian football Walid Sadi has thought of several names, in particular coaches with experience in European football, to take the place of Belmadi. However, if Zizou was flattered by the invitation from his parents’ country of origin, the former Real Madrid coach insisted on refusing this request.

This is not the first proposal refused by the 1998 Ballon d’Or since he had been contacted by the American and Brazilian Federations, whose advances he both refused, as the French sports daily explains. His objective, for his part, is only an open secret, since he has always shown interest in the position of coach of the France team, which Didier Deschamps should occupy until the 2026 World Cup.