Gleizes: Zidane tackles Algiers

Zidane named France coach: an Algerian file already looms over his tenure

The French Football Federation has confirmed the appointment of Zinédine Zidane as the new head coach of the French national team, succeeding Didier Deschamps. He takes charge on August 1, under a contract running through the 2030 World Cup, enough to carry Les Bleus through two Nations League campaigns, Euro 2028 qualifiers, and then qualification for the following World Cup.

Even before naming his first squad, Zidane found himself drawn into a matter that reaches well beyond the pitch. Asked about the case of Christophe Gleizes, the French sports journalist sentenced in Algeria to seven years in prison, he said he hoped to see him come home: “We hope he can return.” His remarks were not incidental, the journalist’s family had publicly called on figures from the football world to take up the case, naming Zidane specifically.

There is, in fact, a personal dimension to this that can’t be ignored. Zidane’s son, Luca, is now the goalkeeper for the Algerian national team. He opted for that nationality after coming up through the French youth ranks, never having been called up to the senior France side. The new coach of Les Bleus therefore has, quite literally, a son wearing Algeria’s colors at the very moment he takes charge of the rival team, no small detail in a context where football regularly serves as a sounding board for diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers.

The Gleizes case dates back to May 2024, when the journalist traveled to Algeria to investigate the death of a JS Kabylie player. Algerian authorities accused him of maintaining ties to people close to the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), an organization Algiers classifies as terrorist, and convicted him of “glorifying terrorism.” His sentence was upheld on appeal in Tizi Ouzou in December, and he has since filed a cassation appeal.

The case has become entangled in the broader climate of tension between the two countries. Ferhat Mehenni, president of the Kabyle provisional government in exile, addressed it directly in a post on his X account titled “Zidane for the Liberation of Christophe Gleizes.” In it, he claims the Algerian military regime had planned to trade the journalist for the extradition of its opponents, Kabyle activists in particular, a plan he says was scaled back after Algerian consular agents were arrested in France in connection with the kidnapping of Amir DZ, leaving the negotiations, in his account, focused solely on the journalist’s release. These are Mehenni’s own claims, and they have not been independently confirmed. He closed his post with a direct appeal to the new coach: “For our part, we would be pleased if Zinedine Zidane also spoke out in favor of the release of Kabyle political prisoners, men and women alike,” before signing off with “Long live the Federal Republic of Kabylia.”

That statement fits a pattern that several critical voices, including within the Kabyle movement itself, have long attributed to Mehenni: a tendency to fold this kind of case back into his own persona and his own movement, risking the impression that the Kabyle cause begins and ends with his own pronouncements.

What does not appear to be in dispute, however, is the starting point: Gleizes is in prison for doing his job as a journalist, and his conviction raises real questions about the fairness of his trial — regardless of whatever geopolitical bargaining narrative one might want to graft onto it.