by Tammy Sewell
“We are certainly enraged, disappointed and traumatized but, tomorrow morning, the day will dawn and the strength of men and of a people is to get up. We too will get up. »
It is with this message of challenge that Djamel Belmadi closed the interview in which he announced that he remains at the head of the national football team. The interview was broadcast this Sunday, April 24 by the Algerian Football Federation on its official website.
But before managing to display this determination, Djamel Belmadi took the time (50 minutes) to come back to what happened against Cameroon on March 29 in Blida, arbitration, his ambition and his projects, his relations with the Algerian Football Federation.
Above all, he settled his accounts with his detractors, numbering only “6 or 7”, but who, to hear him, have a great capacity for nuisance.
The Greens coach therefore waited almost a month to end the suspense. Why ? He says he is not afraid of words and describes the elimination of the national team from the race for the World Cup as a “drama”.
“This football drama deserved this time, because I prepared myself in the back of my head in case it didn’t work out, to have to leave office,” he said.
So that’s what’s happened over the last three weeks. Djamel Belmadi assured that in his contract, which runs until next December, there is no obligation of result. Nevertheless, he proposed to the Algerian football federation to terminate it if they so wished.
“I couldn’t turn my back on the public”
“I gave the president of the federation and all my managers the possibility of ending this contract quietly. It’s not a resignation, it’s a proposal. It was not accepted and they wanted me to continue to lead the national team, ”reveals Djamel Belmadi. This renewed confidence was decisive in his decision to remain in charge of the Greens.
The other element is of course the support of the public, despite the double failure at CAN 2022 and in qualifying for the 2022 World Cup. Belmadi seems very touched by this point on which he dwells.
“If I had sensed the slightest doubt in the public, I wouldn’t even be here talking (…) The public still believes in us and I can’t turn my back on that. It gives us even more strength,” he says.
And to insist: “I could not turn my back on this public and we must continue the mission and we will do it as we are used to, with the heart, all our investment, our desire. These people deserve all the good. I hope this is a decision in the interest of the country. “We will never forget this defeat and this sadness, but we are here to give back to the people what they want and to recreate hope and joy”, he continues.
“African arbitration is still in the prehistoric period”
Despite the disillusion, Djamel Belmadi defends his work at the head of the Greens. “God is my witness, every day that I spent at the head of the national team, we put that at the top of the priorities,” he said.
Facing Cameroon, “it is not the best team, with proof, which qualified for the World Cup”, accuses Belmadi who recalls that with the tactics put in place for the first time, the he national team won in Cameroon and, “within 30 seconds”, we would not be there to question some of its choices, such as leaving a player like Ahmed Touba.
Many in Algeria criticize the arbitration of Gambian Bakary Gassama and Belmadi is not left out. “He took away the hope of a whole country”, accused the Algerian coach who admits not liking to see the Gambian referee, leaving the country after the match, “installed comfortably in the lounges of the airport of Algiers with a coffee and a thousand leaves”.
He took away the hope of a whole country. “I’m not saying who should kill him, but he’s more than an (unjust) haggar”, fulminates Belmadi who finds all African arbitration “still in a prehistoric age”.
Refereeing and infrastructure are the two points that Algerian football officials will have to settle in the future, he suggests.
Changes in the group
Regarding the future, Djamel indicated that he has thought about the strategy he will put in place and revealed that there will be changes in the group, while emphasizing that “we must not throw everything away and not to question”, because “we have achieved some more than interesting things.
In any case, with or without this elimination, he assures us, “there are a lot of things that were going to happen. We are in the eternal questioning.
The immediate future is the CAN 2023 qualifiers, which begin in June. Belmadi is content to call for vigilance, recalling that there is no longer “any easy match in Africa”.
On what has been said about his relations with the president of the FAF, Djamel Belmadi wanted to put things in their place. “We have always been in contact, through my education and my professional ethics, I have always shown him the respect of a coach to a president”, assures Belmadi, despite, he concedes, “a gap in terms of knowledge and skills on a purely footballing level”.
“He bears somewhere the responsibility for a collective failure of which we are a part, maybe someone has to pay for that, I don’t know, the reasons belong to him. Everything that has been said about our relationship is a lie, ”he repeats.
FAF candidates must not hide behind the “conspirators”
The opportunity for the coach to deny everything that was attributed to him as a role and position during the departure of Kheireddine Zetchi and the arrival of Amara Charaf-Eddine at the head of the FAF in April 2021.
“To those who still say that I did not obtain satisfaction to keep Zetchi, I never asked for something, I said it in front of everyone and in front of the President of the Republic. On Zetchi I never intervened. To Mr. Amara, I say thank you and you are not the only culprit. As for the one who will come, it is not my prerogatives and I do not have to give my opinion”.
Belmadi only calls on potential candidates to show themselves clearly instead of “hiding behind the conspirators”.
These “inner conspirators” numbered 6 or 7 people, “easily identifiable”. “They are known, they tired us, it’s misery”, loose Belmadi, without naming names.
According to him, these are “plateau coaches who have not even trained U13s. If we give them a team, we will see their level.
The coach of the Greens seems to resent them strongly. “There are 6 or 7 of them. Four on the sets, 2 or 3 youtubers, 2 twitterers, the flies, they say the same thing. It is they who hurt the country, who bring back darkness and ambiguity. They don’t like the country. For them it was Eid before its time (after the elimination). They are hypocrites as defined by the Koran. They fly the flag, but there is nothing Algerian about them. There is his pocket and his little person. A perfume, a journey with entry to Sidi Moussa. For little things like that they are ready for their country to go through crises like this, ”says Djamel Belmadi.
oicanadian.com
