For several seasons, Leicester City Football Club has worked with De Montfort University’s International Centre for Sports History and Culture on various heritage projects. In this edition of Football's Pioneers, Professor Matt Taylor assesses the remarkable career of Rachid Mekhloufi.
There are few footballers whose careers outline the links between politics and sport quite as clearly as Rachid Mekloufi.
Born in Sétif in French Algeria in 1936, as a youngster he played for Union Sportive Franco-Musulmane de Sétif, a leading Algerian club at the time.
Scouts from Saint Etienne spotted him and, in 1954, he moved to France.
In two spells at Saint Etienne, Mekhloufi helped the club win its first four French league titles, in 1957/58, 1963/64, 1966/67 and 1967/68.
He scored 152 goals in 335 first team appearances over 10 seasons and remains the second-highest goalscorer in the club’s history.
Mekhloufi was one of group of senior Algerian professionals who, in April 1958, left their French clubs to join the FLN (Algerian Liberation Front) soccer team between 1958 and 1962.
Based in Tunis, the team had been formed with the aim of increasing international awareness of the Algerian War of Independence against France.
Mekhloufi was one of a number of players who elected not to represent France, for whom he had been capped four times in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden.
Banned by FIFA and unable to play in Algeria while the war was on, the FLN team toured extensively in North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and East Asia.
Playing a game based on finesse and fluid passing movements, they won 65 of their 91 matches against teams of varying quality.
The team was disbanded in 1962 shortly before Algeria gained independence.
Mekhloufi returned to Saint Etienne via a season (and another national title) at Servette in Switzerland. Six more seasons with Les Verts followed before Mekhloufi finished his playing career at Bastia.
He played 10 times for the newly-independent Algeria, scoring five goals.
In 1964, he was in the team that defeated West Germany 2-0 in Algiers. Eighteen years later, Mekhloufi faced West Germany again, this time as coach.
In their first World Cup match, they shocked the world with a 2-1 victory and, in 1990, Mekhloufi’s rise to the pinnacle of Algerian football was complete when he became president of the national federation.
