photo by: Wikimedia Commons

Riyad Mahrez, the captain of the Algerian National Team, playing during a World Cup qualifying match against Guinea on Sept. 8, 2025. Mahrez is one of the the Algerian national team's biggest stars and should be a key player for the Fennec Foxes in the World Cup campaign.

Now that the Algerian National Team has selected Lawrence as its “home away from home” for the 2026 FIFA World Cup this June and July, here are a few facts to know about the team and the country we’ll be hosting.

Get to know the team

The Algerian National Team is sometimes known as “The Greens,” after the color of their uniforms, or “The Fennec Foxes,” the country’s national animal. They first joined FIFA in 1964 and first qualified for the World Cup in 1982 when it was played in Spain.

An infamous game: In the 1982 tournament, the Algerian team left a permanent mark on the World Cup’s rules. In the group stage, Algeria upset West Germany 2-1 in its first match, and it would have qualified for the knockout rounds if not for an infamous game between West Germany and Austria. Because Algeria had already played its last game, the West German and Austrian players knew there was a result — a one-goal win for Germany — that would guarantee both of their teams advanced. Germany scored after ten minutes to go up 1-0, and both teams settled for that result, and since Algeria had already played, there was nothing the Greens could do to affect it. Algeria’s soccer federation protested, and this led to FIFA changing the rules for future tournaments so the final group games would be played at the same time.

Other tournament appearances: Algeria also qualified for the World Cup in 1986, 2010 and 2014. In 2010, the United States National Team beat Algeria 1-0 in the final match of the group stage with a stoppage time goal by Landon Donovan to advance to the knockout round.

The only time Algeria has advanced to the knockout stage in the World Cup was in 2014 in Brazil. They lost to the eventual winner Germany 2-1 in the Round of 16 in a match that went to extra time after it ended 0-0 after 90 minutes.

Algeria has won the African Cup of Nations — the top competition among African countries — twice, once as host of the tournament in 1990 and again in 2019 in Egypt.

Captain and coach: Algeria’s captain is forward Riyad Mahrez, who previously played for Leicester City and Manchester City in the English Premier League. Mahrez was born in France just outside of Paris to Algerian parents, but was eligible to play for Algeria due to FIFA rules. In recent years, a majority of the players who represent Algeria have been dual nationals, and over half of the most recent team’s members were born in Europe — the majority in France, like Mahrez. They are coached by Bosnian coach Vladimir Petković.

The country and its history

The biggest country in Africa. Algeria covers over 919,000 square miles on the continent’s northern coast, and in addition to being the largest country in Africa by area, it’s also the largest country bordering the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its neighbors are Morocco to the west, Tunisia and Libya to the east, and Mali, Niger and Mauritania to the south, and its largest city and capital is the port city of Algiers.

Algeria’s history: Algeria has been an independent nation since 1962, when it won its independence after more than a century as a French colony. Its Islamic roots stretch back to the seventh and eighth centuries, when Arab dynasties arrived in the region, according to the foreign affairs ministry’s site, and in ancient times it was part of the Roman Empire.

Who lives there? More than 48 million people call Algeria home, making it the 10th most populous country in Africa, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Most of the population lives in the northern part of the country, known as the Tell, which is close to the sea. To the south, the vast Sahara Desert means the population is much sparser.

Most Algerians practice Sunni Islam, and one of the official languages is Arabic, but it’s not the only one; the other official language is Tamazight, spoken by the indigenous Amazigh people who lived there for thousands of years before Arabic speakers arrived. Some also refer to them as Berbers — “a term coined as an effect of colonialism and often considered pejorative,” according to the Princeton University Library. French has also persisted in the country due to its colonial past; in 2023, the Associated Press reported that 15 million people in Algeria could speak it. Only two other nations are home to more French speakers: France itself and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In terms of life span, average education and relative wealth, Algerians rank highly compared to their peers on the same continent. In the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which takes all of those factors into account, Algeria was the third-highest-ranked country in Africa as of 2025.