Algeria Reportedly Cancels Soccer Match Over Israeli Coach

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Don’t hate the player, hate the Jewish coach, might be Algeria’s sports motto.
Algeria’s soccer team is reportedly pulling out of a friendly match with Ghana because they have an Israeli head coach, reporting from Ghanaian media.
According to the report, the Algerian team canceled the match scheduled for September to ensure that Avram Grant did not step foot in their country, which could potentially infuriate the Algerian people who embrace a pro-Palestinian agenda.
Algerian journalist Ayman Gada posted to Facebook that “the Algerian national team canceled the friendly match because it refused to host Ghana’s Israeli coach,” the Times of Israel said.
Grant, a veteran coach of the English soccer team Chelsea, has been coaching the West African nation’s team for the past two years.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
