Forget that bad memory forever. Emmanuel Macron estimated this Friday in Algiers that a friendly football match between the teams of France and Algeria “would be a good thing to ward off the past”, because “sport must reconcile”.
Twenty-one years after the last match between the two selections, which ended with an invasion of the pitch at the Stade de France, in the most total confusion on October 6, 2001, the President of the Republic showed himself in favor of the organization of a new meeting. A desire that is fully in line with what Noël Le Graët, the president of the French Football Federation, advocates.
“We will obviously talk about it with the president [Abdelmadjid Tebboune] and its teams, it’s not for me to say, and then it will also depend on the chance of the competitions to come, for some, I wish us,” he said during a press briefing, to the end of a long visit to the European cemetery of Saint-Eugene, in the suburbs of Algiers, on the second day of his visit to Algeria.
“I think that sport must reconcile, so that’s why, tomorrow in Oran, I will be with our athletes in anticipation of the 2024 Olympics” organized in Paris, he added. “Culture, as I mentioned yesterday in the press conference, and sport, these are areas where we must be together, so sometimes we can compete, but we compete in a friendly way”, insisted Emmanuel Macron .