Bundesliga at AFCON | Algeria Preview | OneFootball

The penultimate edition of our Get German Football News “Bundesliga at AFCON” preview sections accords plenty of space for German football’s most represented country: Algeria. The “Desert Foxes” might have even brought more German football professionals with them. Slow-to-take off Stuttgart summer signing Badredine Bouanani received his last call up in October. BVB II defender Elias Benkara was with the team as recently as November. Old familiar face Nabil Bentaleb (of Schalke) wasn’t far off either. An extremely familiar face (long-time Swiss national team trainer Vladimir Petkovic) is now coaching the team.

Algeria: “The Fennecs”

Former coach Djamel Belmadi led the team to the 2019 title in that strange oddity that was a summer AFCON. In a way, Germans were relieved to watch players Islam Slimani, Riyad Mahrez, Sofiane Feghouli, Raïs M’Bohli, Aïssa Mandi, and Baghdad Bounedjah ultimately earn a justified reward for all their hard work over the past decade. Many of those actors were there on the fateful night in Porto Alegré back in 2014 when Algeria came agonizingly close to eliminating Germany en route to our fourth World Championship. Whew! So close. Germany saved by Manuel Neuer’s first “sweeper keeper” act!

As it stands, that 2014 match would end up being the last one played by the Fennecs on the grandest stage. After Vahid Halilhodzic left after the 2014 tournament, a succession of national team trainers couldn’t get the program straight in time to qualify for the 2018 World Bup. Belmadi delivered the 2019 title, but missed out on the 2022 World Cup and couldn’t get the team out of the group in the 2021 and 2023 competitions. Under Halilhodzic’s Bosnian compatriot (and certified Kent Brockman lookalike) Petkovic, they should be on the way to getting back on track.

Notes on Fennec Football in Germany

Former Bochum and Lautern midfielder Antar Yahia and German top-tier journeyman Karim Matmour are the two players most familiar to the German footballing public. Matmour remains the most famous and beloved Fennec in German footballing circles thanks in part to the fact that he settled in the Bundesrepublik after his playing career was over. Yahia caught some ire for his outgoing transfer demands when playing for the Revierklub.

Dozens of less successful players traversed what one might term the “Ishak Belfodil” career trajectory in Germany. Matmour can still use some more company in the pantheon of Algerian footballers with long-held German club ties. It genuinely sucks that Mitchell Weiser hasn’t gotten his cap yet. The player we’re due to discuss first has actually been Algerian international with the most German club appearances for quite some time. He’s also back in very good form.

Bundesliga AFCON Representatives, Algeria

Ramy Bensebaini, Borussia Dortmund

Bensebaini was part of the 2019 summer championship squad and lifted the trophy before he ever set foot on the pitch in the Bundesrepublik. Pumped full of confidence, He immediately took off in the Bundesliga and was among one of the key performers in the Marco Rose squad that claimed top place in the table until December of that year. Pretty much everyone covering the Bundesliga beat considered him one of the best Bundesliga additions ever.

Bensebaini would go on to rack up nine scorer points (four goals and five assists) en route to helping Gladbach qualify for the Champions’ League at the end of the 2019/20 campaign. The prolific left-back scored a total of 26 goals across all competitions for the foals in four seasons spent with the BMG. Then came the move to Dortmund on a free ahead of the 2023/24 campaign and…well…so much for the whole “prolific” thing.

Bensebaini was widely considered one of the biggest ever Dortmund transfer flops (and that is saying quite a bit) after a disastrous season during which he barely featured despite being mostly fit. He did improve vastly in the 2024/25 campaign, scoring three goals across all competitions and garnering six assists in the league. Thus far this year, he’s scored two UCL goals and delivered several exceptionally strong league performances.

At the age of 30, Bensebaini has become a much more well-rounded player and regained his ability to influence the attack “from the deep”. The general way in which the Transfermarkt system appraises players means that someone of Bensebaini’s age will likely never see another increase (He’s currently valued at €7m), but that doesn’t mean that he’s not worth a ton to the right team. Experience and maturity aren’t really appraised in such systems.

Mark the author’s, words.

Ramy is far from finished.

Fares Chaïbi, Eintracht Frankfurt

Chaïbi definitely constitutes the case of a player whom one expected a little more from. The offensive-minded midfielder got off to an excellent start for his new German club during the 2023/24 campaign and – at the time of the last AFCON – we were praising him for displaying excellent positional awareness after two Bundesliga matches in which he bagged a brace of assists. The famed “pre-assist” tracking measures linked him with involvement in 12 SGE goals during the first half of the season. It really did appear as if a new midfield star was budding.

For some reason, however, Chaïbi looked significantly less confident after returning from the 2023 AFCON. Though he continued to thrive in the Conference League, many of his Bundesliga performances featured glaring mistakes. Chaïbi actually lost his starting place and never went the full 90 minutes in a match over the course of the entire rest of the season. The problems persisted over the course of the 2024/25 campaign. Dino Toppmöller often scratched him entirely even though he was fit. Chaïbi barely started and collected only three assists all year, two of which came at the tail end of the season.

This year, the now still only 23-year-old has definitely regained some of his former spark. Chaïbi has collected seven assists across all competitions and, in many instances, that intelligent intuition on the ball has been discernible yet again. Like in the case of Chaïbi’s north African colleague and club teammate Ellyes Skhiri, there’s been times where he seemed woefully suited to his tactical deployment. Sigh. So it goes with Toppmöller’s SGE sometimes. In any event, it looks as if Chaïbi is trending upwards again. 

Ibrahim Maza, Bayer 04 Leverkusen

One of German football’s most promising young talents honestly doesn’t need much further elaboration. Enough ink has been spilled on the creative and snake-hipped young German midfielder tapped to serve as the “next Florian Wirtz”. Maza has exceeded all expectations with absolute world class performances for Germany’s red company tea, The 20-year-old displaced newly anointed Leverkusen captain Robert Andrich to earn a starting place in midfield, quickly scoring four goals and bagging four assists in 21 appearances across all comps. 

Maza joined Leverkusen from Hertha this summer as a long-time attacking midfield prospect meant to work as a No. 10. His success as a No. 6 nevertheless doesn’t surprise as it proves to be a very good position for someone of his technical ability on the ball. With each match, Maza seems to grow more comfortable asserting himself physically in the German top flight. It helped out immensely that he could focus on getting the passing triangles right father back and choose the right moments to move forward. He’s doing a unbelievably awesome job.

Mohammed Amoura, VfL Wolfsburg

No matter how bad Wolfsburg are, Amoura just keeps producing. The undisputed “diamond in the rough” of last year’s team (ten goals and 12 assists) blows everyone else on the VfL roster out of the water with six goals and three assists thus far this year. Heading into the AFCON, Amoura scored in back-to-back league fixtures and played a hugely important role in his club’s unexpected renaissance. His incredible tally of 11 (!!) goals for country this year played the greatest role in his club’s successful World Cup qualifying campaign.

One simply has a bonafide star here. Nothing else to add apart from the fact that one would actually rather like to see him play somewhere other than Wolfsburg. A left-lane cutter as brilliant as this one could really light up just about any league if given the chance to play for a stable team. It’s well known that the 35-year-old wants out, but the VWers hold all the cards with respect to the player they just clause-contracted last year. It will likely take an oversized offer from the Isle to pry him out of Lower Saxony. 

GGFN | Peter Weis