Abstract

Soccer has accompanied North-African institutional, social, political and cultural developments. The article analyses the evolution of Algerian football, highlighting the main links between football, identity, legitimacy and protest, and how national media according to circumstances have emphasized these links. However, the participation to international competitions, usually underlined in terms of government propaganda, has recently gained further value, by binding to the rebirth of a feeling of Arabness, especially during the 2010-2011 protests. The narrative articulation of such feeling is verified in the participation of the Algerian national team to FIFA World Cup 2014.