One month after the disappearance of the legend Rachid Makhloufianother monument of Algerian football bows out: Mahieddine Khalef.
Iconic coach of the national team and JS Kabylie for more than a decade, a record in the history of Algerian football, Mahieddine Khalef died this Tuesday, December 10 at the age of 80, announced the federation Algerian football.
Suffering for several months, the “man from Gijon”, as he was called, in reference to the resounding victory of the national eleven of which he was coach against Germany (2-1) in 1982 World Cup in Spain, is without a doubt, with Rachid Makhloufi, who died a month earlier, one of those who wrote the most glorious pages of Algerian football.
An architect who gave national football its credentials by propelling it and giving it respectability on the continental and international scene.
If he did not leave his mark as a footballer, a career that he began in Kenitra in Morocco, where he was born in 1944 to a Kabyle father and mother from Beni Yenni, Mahieddine Khalef will rather shine on the bench as coach of JS Kabylie, then of the national team.
In a duo with the Polish Stefan Zywotko, he transformed the JSK from 1979 to 1990 into a real machine to win titles and had an impressive track record: eight Algerian championship titles in eleven years, an Algerian Cup, a World Cup African champion clubs as well as an African Super Cup.
A success far from being the result of chance: it is the result of iron discipline that he established within the club which would become the most successful in Algeria, a detailed knowledge of football and professionalization before the hour of club management.
And if the JSK, then described as “Jumbo-Jet”, reached the heights, which those nostalgic for this golden period evoke today with bitterness, it undoubtedly owes it, in large part to this man who early understood that only rigor and seriousness pay off.
In the Algerian national team, where he led the eleven between 1979 and 1984, the results were not to be outdone: qualification for the Mediterranean Games in Split in Yugoslavia, qualification for the 1980 Olympic Games and a final of the African Cup. the same year in Nigeria.
“Do you know that the day before the final, we left Ibadan, located about 70 km from Lagos which we reached at midnight. The bus broke down several times during the trip. Once at the hotel, we had to wait for the Morocco team to leave the establishment. The players took possession of the rooms around one o'clock in the morning to play a final the next afternoon,” said Mahieddine Khalef a few years ago, to explain the failure of the EN in the 1980 CAN final. against Nigeria (0-3).
But without a doubt, it was the resounding feat he achieved with the Greens at the 1982 World Cup against Germany that would propel Mahieddine Khalef to the pantheon of national football.
Mahieddine Khalef, the man of Algeria's victory against Germany at the 82 World Cup
Thanks to polished football and a host of talents like Rabah Madjer, Lakhdar Belloumi, Mustapha Dahleb or even Salah Assad and Merzekane, he managed to get rid of the German ogre arousing the admiration of the world football elite.
Had it not been for the shameful arrangement, at the origin of the change of the regulations by FIFA, between Austria and its German neighbor, Algeria could legitimately, with two victories, reach the second round of the World Cup. Spanish.
After his departure from JSK in 1984, he stayed away from the football fields, before returning to service, first as coach of the Emirati club of Al Ain, then of the Moroccan teams of Tangier, Oujda and ES Sahel in Tunisia.
Mahieddine Khaled was recalled to the bedside of JSK during the 200-2001 season by the former president of the club, the deceased Mohand Cherif Hannachi. A winning return since he managed, along with Sendjak, to obtain the club's first CAF cup, strengthening the aura of JSK in Africa.
Solicited for his expertise and football knowledge by the Qatari channel Al Jazeera sport (beIN SPORTS), after its launch in 2003, Mahieddine Khalef officiated there for a few years before being ejected, said to be the victim of a plot by one of his…fellow citizens also officiating there.
The one who politely declined the post of Minister of Sports which was offered to him, as well as to be a deputy under the banner of two parties which requested him, has, for several years, disappeared from the radar.
Very few media invited him on their sets and almost ostracized by officials. A situation experienced by the man as a great wound, according to Omar Ouali, journalist, one of his friends.
“He was disillusioned, disappointed. He suffered from ingratitude. There was vaguely an order to ostracize him,” he told TSA.
Coming from a large family in Tizi-Ouzou, brother of the deceased Kasdi Merbah, Mahieddine Khalef probably did not benefit from the honors and respect that his country owed him during his lifetime.
Only Mohand Chérif Hannachi remembered his contribution to national football: in 2009, he organized a ceremony to induct him as honorary president of the JSK.
Mahieddine Khalef, who in recent years continued to follow the exploits of the national team and the JSK, his favorite teams, far from the limelight, leaves, as he lived: with dignity. A monument of Algerian football that will not soon be forgotten by those who know the value of man.
