From Left to Right:
Standing : Zemmamouche – Slimani – Belkalem – Mandi – Halliche – Mesbah
Crouching Lacen (C) – Mahrez – Guedioura – Ghilas – Brahimi.
This is a list of foreign players who have played international football for the Algerian national football team. Algeria boasts a diaspora of over two million people in Europe, allowing it to count on dual nationals to strengthen its team. However, in most cases, dual nationals face a choice play for their home country (very often in Europe) or their country of origin, Algeria. The turning point and the amplification of this issue of dual national players, however, came at the beginning of the 2000s, some like Farès Chaïbi or Riyad Mahrez chose their country of origin while others like Karim Benzema and Samir Nasri chose their country of birth, France. [1] [2] [3]
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In the 21st century, many selected players come from Algerian immigration in France. Thus of the 23 players who won the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, 14 (or 60%), including Djamel Belmadi, are Franco-Algerians born in France and all have French nationality. Furthermore, they were all born and raised in metropolitan France but chose Algeria as their sporting nationality. In March 2023, during the qualifying matches for the CAN 2024, five of the six players joined the national team. These are Jaouen Hadjam, Farès Chaïbi, Rayan Aït-Nouri, Badredine Bouanani and Kevin Van Den Kerkhof. The coach declared during a press conference held at the National Technical Center of Sidi Moussa (CTN) in Algiers, concerning the call-up, for the first time, of several players, most of whom play abroad. [4] [5]
The following players:
- have played at least one game for the full Algeria international team.
- have not been born inside Algeria and qualify through the FIFA grand parent rules,
16 of the Algeria players selected for the 2014 FIFA World Cup squad had been born in France. [6] This followed rule changes by FIFA which allowed players to switch nationality, so long as they had not played in a competitive senior international match. [7] Eight players in the 2014 Algeria squad had played for France youth teams. [7]
