Saadane has nothing to do with “tactics,” says former Greens’ Captain, Mansouri

Former captain of Algeria’s national squad, Yazid Mansouri, has slammed his former coach, Rabah Saadane, saying “he’s weak personality and has nothing to do with football”.

Rabah Saadane has contributed to a third historical apparition of the Desert Foxes in the World Cup in South Africa 2010. The man had decided removing the name of Yazid Mansouri preferring thus integrating Racing Santander’s midfielder Lacen Mehdi, while the armband was attributed to Bochum’s defender Anthar Yahia. Such a decision erupted the indignation of Mansouri as he could not making his World Cup dream come true!

In this interview with Echorouk, former Lorient’s Mansouri responds to Saadane’s “allegations” on him, assuming that the former national coach did not know his job and has nothing to do with football.

 “All our trainings were the same; we practice short passes or so, then we play a short game and it’s over! We weren’t even do jogging! We’d been doing so for three years,” said Mansouri, adding: “Saadane had never given us a tactical plan to practice, simply because he has nothing to do with that!”

Mansouri goes on and says: “Frankly, maintaining Saadane after we qualified to the Mondial was a mistake, because all he knows is defence playing,” adding: “He has never declared that the ‘we will play to win,’ whoever the adversary is; he always says ‘well, it’s a difficult game!’ He don’t know how to motivate players, rather he brought our spirit level down! The only game he said he will win it was the one against the United States, in the 1^st round’s third-day, simply because we had to win it to qualify to the second round!”

Mansouri further denied any misconduct during his 7 years service at the national team, contrary to “allegations” of Saadane who accused his player of uttering “odd words” when he told him the news of removing his name from the list concerned with the World Cup games.