“A compter du 1er janvier 2011, Rabah Saâdane est le nouvel entraîneur du Yémen pour trois ans. Il aura comme adjoints Zoheir Djelloul, avec qui il a travaillé en équipe nationale algérienne, et un technicien yéménite”, a déclaré Hamid Chibani à la Radio internationale algérienne. “Saâdane aura comme première mission la qualification du Yémen à la Coupe du Monde en 2014″, a-t-il ajouté.

Le président de la Fédération yéménite, Ahmed Salah El-Aïfi, s’est engagé vendredi, lors d’une réunion avec Rabah Saâdane, à accorder toutes les facilités à l’entraîneur algérien pour qu’il réussisse dans sa mission, selon M. Chibani.

Le technicien algérien avait déjà dirigé le Yémen pendant 16 mois, entre 2004 et 2005, rappelle-t-on.

USA got a late chance in the second minute of the stoppage time when Donovan struck the goal.

Final score Algeria 0- USA 1. With this win USA and England advance to the round of 16.

Soufiane Mebarki and Seddik Berraja scored the goals that saw Belouizdad advance 2-1 on aggregate after losing the first leg 1-0 in Atbara two weeks ago.

Algeria beat Egypt in an exciting play-off to book their ticket for the 2010 World Cup and experienced forward Karim Matmour is confident les Fennecs have what it takes to reach the second round.

“We must not go to South Africa without the belief that we’re capable of upsetting the favourites. We want to win as many of our games as we can, and we’ll do whatever it takes,” Matmour told fifa.com.

The Desert Foxes will be using the game as part of their build up to the World Cup in South Africa, which kicks off two weeks later.

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Rabah Saadane’s squad are due to meet on 20 May for a training camp at the Italian Football Association’s technical centre in Florence.

Before that the Algerians will host Serbia in another friendly on 3 March.

Their opponents for their final friendly on 5 June in Algeria have yet to be decided and they will fly to South Africa the next day.

The Algerians are in Group C at the World Cup alongside England, Slovenia and the USA.

Well done Algeria.

1 2 3 viva le Algerie.

French Algerian Zidane, who captained French soccer team in 2006

According to Zinedine Zidane, the Algerian national team could make the second round at next summer’s World Cup in South Africa but will have to go through Slovenia to make it possible.

“If they beat Slovenia, yes [they can progress]. After that it’s going to be England and then it could come down to the United States. There are lots of quality players. A World Cup transcends one player. In 2006, I was done at Real Madrid but I realized an enormous World Cup,” he explained while speaking to France Football.

Meanwhile, the former Real Madrid star was asked if he would be willing to offer a helping hand to the team if he was invited by their coach, Rabah Saadane, and his response was rather intriguing.

“Maybe it’s already happened… There are some things I’d like to do but I can’t speak about them publicly. That stays between me and those involved, the players. I know some of them. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll do something with them either. All of that only concerns myself,” he added.

Throughout the month of November, qualifying soccer matches between Egypt and Algeria have been tarnished with violent incidents as the two Arab countries competed for a spot in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. While the Egyptian team prevailed in Cairo, Algeria was the ultimate victor in Khartoum, Sudan.

Aggressive rhetoric preceded the games, as both Egyptians and Algerians engaged in vicious comments through the media. “For weeks, Egyptian and Algerian fans engaged in cyberwars, taunting each other in online forums, trading doctored team photos, provocative homemade songs, and YouTube videos,” writes Ursula Lindsey for Foreign Policy.

Lindsey recounts an inflammatory comment by Amr Adeeb, anchor of “Al-Qahira Al-Youm (Cairo Today).” The night before the match in Cairo, Adeeb stated, “What annoys me is the way the Algerians talk … this provocation, this conceit … Why do the Algerians hate us so much? We supported them during their million-martyr revolution; we sent them teachers to teach them Arabic.”

Algerians also engaged in the taunting, using Egypt’s controversial relationship with Israel to degrade their opponent. Before the games started, Algerian hackers installed an image of the Star of David over the Egyptian flag on the teams’ official website. An Algerian newspaper also referred to Cairo’s stadium as the “Tel Aviv stadium.” According to Gulf News, Algerian and Egyptian youths composed rap songs demonizing their opponents as “villains who must always lose.”

The rivalry was not limited to heated words– injuries among athletes and fans alike were reported throughout the matches, although Algerian and Egyptian sources offered drastically different accounts. Lindsey notes that the Algerian newspaper Echorouk posted a video claiming that an Algerian rapper’s brother was killed in Egypt, however the video was apparently a hoax.

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PARIS – FIFA has awarded Wednesday Spain as the team of the year, with 15 victories in 16 games in 2009, while Algeria and Brazil have the highest increase over the previous year with a gain of 322 points each in the Fifa rankings.

This is the second consecutive year that Spain won this distinction. The only defeat of Spain in 2009 was in the semi-finals of the Confederations Cup this summer against the United States. Spain tops FIFA’s latest rankings released in November.

Algeria, qualified for the World Cup 24 years after her last participation, achieves the rank of its history, winning 38 seats to climb to 26th place. Brazil, however, is in second place behind Spain.