Mustapha Zitouni

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Mustapha Zitouni
Mustapha Zitouni.jpg
Mustapha Zitouni (before 1962)
Personnel
birthday October 19, 1928
place of birth AlgiersAlgeria
date of death 5th January 2014
Place of death NiceFrance
position Defense
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
AS Saint-Eugène
(presumably) Stade Français
1953-1954 AS Cannes
1954-1958 AS Monaco
1958–1962 Football selection of the FLN
1962-1966 RC Kouba (as player-coach)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1957-1958 France 4 (0)
1963-1964 Algeria 7 (?)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1986 Algeria (interim)
1 Only league games are given.

Mustapha Zitouni ( Arabic مصطفى زيتوني, DMG Muṣṭafā Zaitūnī ; * October 19, 1928 in Algiers ; † January 5, 2014 in Nice ) was an Algerian - French football player and coach who also represented both countries internationally. In 1986 he briefly coached the Algerian national team .

Club career

Very little is known about the first 25 years of Zitouni's life. Born in North Africa , which was then dominated by French , he first played for AS Saint-Eugène in Algiers. In 1953 at the latest he came to mainland France , where he played for the second division AS Cannes . It is uncertain whether he had previously played for Stade Français Paris , as claimed in a few sources - at least he did not record a single appearance in the top division there in the 1952/53 season .

At Cannes, the middle runner demonstrated his qualities in such a way that the neighboring first division club AS Monaco signed him in 1954. Even if the Monegasque landed only in a midfield position in the table in the first year, his calm and overview as well as his positional play soon made Mustapha Zitouni a serious challenger to Robert Jonquet , who leased this playing position with his club ( Stade Reims ) and in the national team seemed. From 1955 Monaco reached for the championship title annually , was third in the league in 1956 and 1958, and fifth in 1957. In the cup competition the team played that with Raymond Bellot , Abdelaziz Ben Tifour , Stéphane Bruey , Julien Stopyra and Michel Hidalgo had a number of other great footballer, however, no significant role - except in the season 1957/58, but it Zitouni was only partially involved. In the quarter-finals on April 6, 1958, he was still one of the team that had struggled to beat Racing Strasbourg 2-1; in the semi-finals (1: 2 against Olympique Nîmes on April 27) he was already missing.

Because from April 15, 1958, his professional and national team career - like that of Mekhloufi , Brahimi , Ben Tifour and others - ended overnight because it became known that he intended to play for the FLN football team who campaigned the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN) for the country's independence from France. The players were terminated without notice by their clubs and the association withdrew their licenses. Zitouni had completed 26 point games for Monaco in this 1957/58 season and received a highly rewarded offer from Real Madrid . He then toured with the FLN team until 1962, particularly through stadiums in Eastern Europe and the Third World . After the end of the war of independence through the peace treaty of Évian (1962) Zitouni settled permanently in Algeria. He pursued his sport as a player-coach for the RC Kouba , with whom he made it to the Algerian Cup final in 1966, but lost 3-1 to CR Belouizdad . Then he ended his playing career.

In the national team

Between October 1957 and March 1958 Mustapha Zitouni played four full international matches for France , and his inclusion in the Bleus World Cup squad for the finals in Sweden seemed a matter of form - until April 15, 1958 with the FLN selection. The defender later commented on his step:

“I have a lot of friends in France, but the problem is bigger than any of us. What would you do if your country was at war and you were called? "

For the next four years he traveled around the world with the FLN-Elf; How many of the total of around 80 games he was involved in cannot yet be determined.

From June 1963 to November 1964 he was used in seven official and one unofficial game for the Algerian national team that was newly formed after independence . Among them was an encounter against Germany , which played only its second (against Morocco ) and third game against African teams around the turn of the year 1963/64 . Algeria defeated the DFB team - in one of the last matches under national coach Herberger  - on New Years Day 1964 2-0. The former France professionals Oudjani , Khennane (these are the two goalscorers), Mekhloufi and goalkeeper Boubekeur were also part of the winning team alongside center runner Zitouni.

Success as a player

  • French Cup : Semi-finalist 1958 (not used in this game)
  • Algerian Cup: 1966 finalist

Life after active career

Mustapha Zitouni ran a slaughterhouse in Algiers; he also worked for Air Algérie for a long time . But he has never given up his country's football entirely; In 1986 he was even interim coach of the Algerian national team for a short time. Due to his Alzheimer's disease , he could not take part in an anniversary game in Tunis in April 2008 , with which the beginnings of the FLN selection are remembered and for which he was to put on his football boots again at the age of 79. Zitouni died at the age of 85 in Nice , where he was also buried.

literature

  • Denis Chaumier: Les Bleus. Tous les joueurs de l'équipe de France de 1904 à nos jours. Larousse, o. O. 2004 ISBN 2-03-505420-6
  • Michel Nait-Challal: Dribbleurs de l'indépendance. L'incroyable histoire de l'équipe de football du FLN algérien. Ed. Prolongations, o. O. 2008 ISBN 978-2-916400-32-7
  • Jean-Philippe Rethacker / Jacques Thibert: La fabuleuse histoire du football. Minerva, Genève 1996, 2003 2 ISBN 978-2-8307-0661-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marc Barreaud: Dictionnaire des footballeurs étrangers du championnat professionnel français (1932-1997). L'Harmattan, Paris 1998 ISBN 2-7384-6608-7 , p. 82
  2. cf. Stéphane Boisson / Raoul Vian: Il était une fois le Championnat de France de Football. Tous les joueurs de la première division de 1948/49 à 2003/04. Neofoot, Saint-Thibault o. J.
  3. Chaumier, p. 321
  4. L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: Coupe de France. La folle épopée. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2007 ISBN 978-2-915535-62-4 , p. 374; Rethacker / Thibert, p. 278
  5. April 15th is the date of the first reactions in France.
  6. A particularly detailed article (French) about the history of this FLN team can be found at http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200804141731.html .
  7. Rethacker / Thibert, p. 278
  8. ^ Sophie Guillet / François Laforge: Le guide français et international du football éd. 2007. Vecchi, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-7328-6842-6 , p. 159
  9. Nait-Challal, p. 49
  10. L'Équipe / Gérard Ejnès: La belle histoire. L'équipe de France de football. L'Équipe, Issy-les-Moulineaux 2004 ISBN 2-9519605-3-0 , p. 318
  11. ^ "I have many friends in France, but the problem is bigger than us. What do you do if your country is at war and you get called up? “  - Article from TIME at https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868402,00.html
  12. total number of not more available side , searching web archives: ; a list of the FLN-Elf games can be found at http://www.rsssf.com/tablesa/alg-fln-intres.html ; there is even talk of 91 games.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.elmoudjahid.com
  13. http://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/mzitouni-intl.html
  14. Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (ed.): The history of the national soccer team. Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2004 ISBN 3-89533-443-X , p. 183
  15. DFB (Ed.): Passion on the ball. 100 years of German international matches 1908 to 2008. Medienfabrik, Gütersloh 2007 ISBN 978-3-577-14701-9 , p. 346
  16. Chaumier, p. 321
  17. ^ Nait-Challal, p. 236
  18. Announcement from the Tunisian newspaper La Presse at http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200804100418.html ; Article about his illness at http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/200804141712.html
  19. Football: L'ancien joueur de l'équipe du FLN, Mustapha Zitouni, n'est plus
  20. Décès de Mustapha Zitouni: Une ancienne gloire de l'équipe du FLN. Obituary on elmoudjahid.com of January 5, 2014 (accessed January 5, 2014).