One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Will Algeria’s return to the World Cup be Houssem Aouar’s long-delayed coming out party?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group J preview. You can also read previews of Argentina, Austria, and Jordan.
Will Algeria’s return to the World Cup be Houssem Aouar’s long-delayed coming out party?
Algeria are perhaps the greatest soccer nation that hasn’t played that many World Cup games. The two-time champions of Africa will compete in just their fifth World Cup this summer in North America, and they have only played one knockout game in their history at the tournament.
Algeria nonetheless stick in the mind as an iconic World Cup fixture because of the sheer amount of drama they have packed into those limited minutes. Their World Cup history starts in 1982 with one of the great debuts in the history of the tournament, a 2-1 upset over West Germany. The result was seismic, particularly at a time when only a single CAF nation qualified for each World Cup and chances for African teams to beat elite European sides were scarce.
Algeria’s 1982 tournament also brought one of the great World Cup scandals. In what became known as the Disgrace of Gijón, West Germany and Austria played out a sleepy 1-0 that saw both sides advance from the group stage at Algeria’s expense, after Algeria had played their final match three hours prior. The outrage in response to that match is why final group stage matches are now played simultaneously.
Algeria’s 21st century World Cup history involved coming up on the wrong side of two iconic matches. First Landon Donovan’s last-minute winner in the 2010 group stage, and then a marathon round of 16 loss to the eventual champions Germany in Brazil four years later.
Algeria are a team of big moments, and also big players. Despite long patches of not being on the biggest stage, Algeria also loom large as a major soccer nation for fans the European game in particular because for the past 25 years there has almost always been an Algerian superstar, or a superstar of Algerian descent. on TV every week. 1You might also remember the Algerian national team for being nicknamed the Fennec Foxes, taking their name from the unbelievably cute desert foxes found all across the deserts of North Africa.
First there was Zinedine Zidane. One of the most beloved players of the 1990s and early 2000s, Zidane was a Frenchman with Algerian roots and wore both identities with pride. The same is true for Karim Benzema, who followed in Zidane’s footsteps for both France and Real Madrid.
The mid-2010s introduced the world to Riyadh Mahrez. Algeria’s captain and second in all time goals and appearances for the nation, Mahrez was the shining star of the Leicester City miracle title run in 2015-16, then as a mainstay of Manchester City’s most dominant teams, and possessor of one of the great Premier League highlight reels.
Mahrez is now 35 and a little past his prime, but he still forms part of an impressive front three alongside Marseille striker Amine Gouiri and Wolfsburg winger Mohamed Amoura. Wolfsburg were very bad in the Bundesliga last year, but Amoura was decent in that season and more importantly was outstanding in Algeria’s qualification campaign: Ten goals and four assists in just ten matches.
Algeria also have young attacking talent off of the bench in Anis Hadj Moussa, a winger coming off a good goalscoring season in the Netherlands, and Ibrahim Maza, a skilled central attacking midfielder and rising star for Bayer Leverkusen in Germany.
Defensively, they will be anchored by the veteran presence in midfield from Nabil Bentaleb and in central defense from Ramy Bensebaini.2Bentaleb, who is probably best known for his run with Tottenham in the early 2010s is somehow only 31 and coming off of a good season as the primary defensive midfielder for a Lille team that came in third place in Ligue 1 last year.
Algeria’s wild card is Houssem Aouar. A product of the vaunted Olympique Lyonnais Academy, Aouar was once the next big thing in European football. He projected as a true do-it-all midfielder, someone who could dribble through defences, play killer passes, and finish chances himself.
But after nearly 200 matches for Lyon, his much-rumored transfer to a European megaclub never materialized. He never quite settled in at Roma, and after one season in Italy ended up in Saudi Arabia.
Whether or not players who have made that jump to the Saudi Pro League are still up to playing competitive international football is one of the defining sub-narratives of this World Cup. Mostly, the question is if aging superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo can tap back into their old levels. But for players who moved over younger, like Aouar, the tournament is also a chance to remind the wider football world about their skills.
Aouar switched national team affiliation from France in 2023, and barely playing at AFCON in 2023 and withdrawing from the competition through injury in 2025, this will be Aouar’s real chance to play a major role at an international tournament.
And because he has been injury plagued and playing in the relative obscurity of Saudi Arabia for the past few years, Aouar has a real chance to re-announce himself as a major player at this World Cup.
The era of Houssem Aouar, superstar Champions League midfielder, never quite happened. But if he is still the player that he was in those early seasons in Lyon, the era of Houssem Aouar, World Cup breakout sensation, might be upon us.
And if he can rise to that level, Algeria will be a real threat in their group and beyond.
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