HIBAPRESS – Sports
It seems that the Algerian public has decided to enter the round of 16 of the African Cup of Nations before the starting whistle, carrying with them a bag full of ready-made excuses. It's an old record, but it's valid for all matches, coming out of the "drawer" whenever a difficult match approaches. Before knowing who will win and who will lose, a state of football mourning was declared in Algeria under the title "Injustice" that hasn't happened yet.
The beginning was with the referee, the Egyptian Mohamed Maarouf, who overnight turned from a man with a whistle into a secret agent tasked with a historical mission. According to the circulating Algerian narrative, the referee will not be neutral, even if he is Egyptian, but will be Congolese in spirit because the CAF Secretary General is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, as if the whistle is connected by a direct wire to the Secretary General's office. And because the refereeing record alone is not enough to convince the public in the land of "the strong force," it was necessary to move to a more dramatic level, which is the ticket file, where it was said that the tickets disappeared in a mysterious way, not because of the demand or "poor organization" or "the old tricks" as they promoted before, but this time because the CAF Secretary General himself personally booked them all for the Congolese fans, in a fictional scene that makes him the hero of an action movie, not an administrator in a football organization. In this scenario, as always, the Algerian national team becomes the victim of a global conspiracy, and the Algerian public is wronged in the stands before the players' feet step on the pitch. There is no talk of a game plan or physical readiness or possible mistakes, because the result, according to this narrative, is written in advance in secret ink. And the question remains at the end, what if Algeria wins this match, will all these records that have been eaten by time and drink be canceled, or will the Algerian channels and pages keep them for when they are needed? Crying before the match has become a firmly established tradition in the customs of the country of "Moul Al-Kala" the one with the dissonant voice, while football itself seems to be the last thing that is being thought of amidst this noise filled with tears.
