Algeria Does Not Politicise Sport, Magic Turns Against the Makhzen
After Being defeated politically, the Moroccan Makhzen regime is trying in vain to market itself as a victim of an Algerian decision that prevented the Moroccan national football team for local players from joining Constantine, eastern Algeria, where it dreamed of playing after a direct flight on a Royal Air Maroc plane.
However, the Moroccan Makhzen regime deliberately wants to forget that it has participated in two prominent sporting events since Algeria’s decision to ban Moroccan civil and military aviation from passing over Algeria’s airspace in 2021, which is among the sanctions imposed by Algeria on Rabat, after severing diplomatic relations, due to the hostile positions and practices involving the Moroccan regime towards Algeria.
These two sporting events are the Mediterranean Games, which were hosted by the city of Oran in June 2022, and the Arab Cup U-17 in August 2022, and the Arab Cup for under 17 years in August 2022, which Algeria won, as is known, and in which Morocco participated without noise, as its representatives moved on an indirect flight from Rabat to Tunisia and from there to Algeria, and everything was available to them like the rest of the teams, and the same special conditions were provided by Algeria again to the Moroccan delegation for the African CHAN 2023.
However, this time the Moroccan regime decided to insist on imposing its logic on Algeria and the African Union, by stipulating that it must join the Championship of African Nations in Algeria on a direct flight from Morocco to Algeria and via Royal Maroc airlines, ignoring the decision to ban Moroccan civil and military planes from passing over Algerian airspace, in a premeditated intent to break a non-negotiable sovereign decision.
The Moroccan Makhzen regime’s intention behind making this noise (staging) was bad from the beginning and before reaching this situation, as it entrusted its media arms at home and abroad to disturb the CHAN 2023, which Algeria was preparing for months, by promoting fake news about the African teams’ boycott of the Algerian edition of the CHAN, similar to the Cameroon team, which arrived to Algeria accompanied by the president of the Cameroonian Football Federation, Samuel Eto’o, who overcame the previous football crisis between the two countries and pledged to stand by Algeria and support its candidacy for hosting the AFCON 2025, for which Morocco is also a candidate.
Officials on global and African football, led by the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, and the president of the CAF, the South African, Patrice Motsepe, witnessed Fouzi Lekjaa’s staging and manoeuvres, aimed at trying to bring Algeria to its knees and implicate the African Union, by pushing it to break the air embargo imposed on Moroccan airlines, by requiring to travel on a direct flight, but the trick did not deceive anyone, because Fouzi Lekjaa himself, had transferred the Moroccan U-17 team in the last summer to Algeria via an indirect air flight, just as happened with the Moroccan delegation that participated in the Mediterranean Games in Oran.
Despite the lies that Lekjaa has promoted and his attempts to play the role of the victim, the African Union officials have seen for themselves the services provided by Algeria to receive the Moroccan delegation, starting with the bus transfer to the airport and ending with the hotel services, which are not different from services allocated to the rest of the participating delegations, which falls short all the manoeuvres that the Moroccan side tried to play to anticipate the course of the CAF meeting dedicated to the AFCON 2025.
Thus, the Moroccan side lost the battle of its efforts to implicate politics in sports. Rather, the magic turned against the magician, because the one who tried to introduce politics into sports was the Moroccan side, by stipulating the withdrawal of a sovereign political decision, in exchange for participation, and this was expressed by the official of football in Africa Patrice Motsepe who said in Morocco that the “CAF does not go beyond the limits of sport to politics”.
As for Algeria, it never mixes politics with sports, as the political problem remains political, and this is evidenced by the full care that the Moroccan delegation received during the Mediterranean Games in Oran.