Admission of Failure: Algeria and the Pathological Obsession of a Regime in Denial and Ridicule
Instead of celebrating African women’s football in a spirit of fraternity and continental unity, the Algerian regime has taken a different path: that of obsessive erasure, grotesque camouflage, and institutionalized blindness. What should have been a sporting celebration has, on Algeria’s side, turned into a Kafkaesque exercise of visual, symbolic, and ideological censorship.
Since the kickoff of the 2025 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations — hosted for the second time in a row by Morocco — a distressing spectacle has been unfolding behind the scenes, and often in plain sight. Algerian television has gone to great lengths to erase all signs of the host country. Logos and visual references are systematically removed. The word “Morocco” magically disappears from graphics, the FRMF logo is covered with black tape, and Royal Air Maroc — the official sponsor of the continental event — has had its logo replaced on Algerian broadcasts by that of TotalEnergies. Even the phrase “Morocco 2025” has seemingly become taboo.
This is a true media tragicomedy, in which Algerian authorities are engaged in an organized denial campaign with near-military discipline. But what’s the point of censoring a logo if not to reveal one’s own anxieties and failures? In trying so hard to erase Morocco, the Algerian regime has paradoxically made it the central actor of the competition — the omnipresent specter of its own obsession.
And this isn’t the first time. In 2022, during Morocco’s historic World Cup run in Qatar, Algerian state television (ENTV) opted for total silence over celebration. Not a single image, not a mention, not a word. As if by hiding the Atlas Lions’ achievements, their reality could somehow be erased.
But this goes beyond sports. It is a broader symptom — that of an Algerian regime trapped in hatred of its neighbor, locked in a sterile confrontation, unable to project itself into the future except by caricaturing Morocco. A regime that prefers covering up logos on coaching benches instead of facing its own political, social, and economic failures.
Meanwhile, Morocco moves forward. It builds. It hosts. It organizes. It shines. Even the CAF has praised the Kingdom’s excellence in organizing this Women’s AFCON. While Algeria busies itself applying black stickers, Morocco is already preparing, with its partners, for the 2030 World Cup.
This childish staging does not ridicule Morocco — it instead reveals the profound discomfort of an Algerian leadership that fears its own people, dreads comparison, and is terrified that Algerians might realize what Morocco has become: a stable, ambitious, sovereign country, oriented toward innovation and global cooperation.
French philosopher Pascal Bruckner recently described the situation accurately when he condemned a “brainless people, imprisoned by a racist regime.” Through these petty maneuvers, it is indeed the Algerian people who are being insulted — deprived of an honest reading of the world and locked inside an outdated propaganda machine.
Because censoring a name only amplifies it. Trying to erase Morocco only emphasizes how much it disturbs — through its success, its international standing, and its central place in Africa’s major sporting events.
By obsessively denying the obvious, the Algerian regime turns that very denial into its ultimate admission of weakness. In this Women’s AFCON, Morocco is everywhere — even in places where some wish it were invisible.
And that, precisely, is the Kingdom’s quiet victory.
Abderrazzak Boussaid/le7tv
