In April 2024, a CAF Confederation Cup semi-final between RS Berkane and USM Alger was cancelled twice in the space of eight days. The reason was not injuries or bad weather. Algerian customs had seized the Moroccan club’s shirts because they featured a map of Morocco including Western Sahara, a territory Algeria does not recognise as Moroccan. No fixture better captures how thoroughly politics has fused with football between these two countries.
Key Takeaways
- Algeria and Morocco have met 30 times, with Morocco holding a narrow edge at 10 wins to Algeria’s 9, with 11 draws.
- The two countries’ land border has been closed since 1994, following a bombing in Marrakech that Morocco blamed on Algerian intelligence.
- Algeria and Morocco severed diplomatic relations entirely in August 2021, adding another layer of tension to any fixture between the two.
- A 2024 CAF Confederation Cup semi-final was cancelled twice over a jersey dispute involving a map of Western Sahara, with CAF eventually awarding the tie to Morocco’s RS Berkane.
Where The Tension Actually Started
The Western Sahara dispute sits underneath almost every flashpoint between Algeria and Morocco. Morocco claims sovereignty over the territory, while Algeria backs the Polisario Front and the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a disagreement that has shaped the two countries’ relationship since the 1970s and traces back further still to the 1963 Sand War, a brief border conflict fought shortly after Algerian independence.
The relationship deteriorated further in 1994, after an attack on the Hotel Asni in Marrakech that Morocco blamed on Algerian intelligence services. Morocco responded by imposing visa requirements on Algerian visitors, and Algeria retaliated by closing the shared land border entirely. That border has never reopened, over three decades later, making it one of the longest continuously closed borders anywhere in the world.
Read More: Who Are the Desert Foxes? Algeria’s National Football Team Explained covers the national side at the centre of this rivalry.
What Happens On The Pitch
Algeria and Morocco have played each other 30 times across their history, and the head to head is remarkably close: Morocco lead with 10 wins to Algeria’s 9, with 11 matches drawn. That balance is unusual for a rivalry this politically loaded, where a bigger gap in quality between the sides might have been expected to produce a more one-sided record.
One of the more painful results for Algerian fans came in June 2011, when Morocco won 4-0 in 2012 AFCON qualifying, still one of the heaviest defeats either side has handed the other in a competitive fixture. More recently, the two teams met at the 2021 FIFA Arab Cup, drawing 2-2 before Morocco won on penalties, a match that carried all the usual tension despite being played on neutral ground away from either country’s own stadiums.
When Politics Stopped The Football Outright
Diplomatic relations between Algeria and Morocco were formally severed in August 2021, and the effects on football have been direct and repeated ever since. In 2022, Moroccan journalists were denied entry to cover the Mediterranean Games in Oran, Algeria. In 2023, Morocco withdrew entirely from the African Nations Championship, hosted that year by Algeria, after Algeria refused to grant airspace access to Moroccan carriers trying to fly teams and fans in.
Read More: Algeria at AFCON: Two Titles and a Golden Generation covers the tournament history both countries continue to chase, often with each other watching closely from the same continent.
The 2024 Jersey Controversy
The clearest example of politics overtaking sport came during the 2023-24 CAF Confederation Cup semi-final between RS Berkane and USM Alger. On 20 April 2024, Algerian customs seized Berkane’s match jerseys because they displayed a map of Morocco including Western Sahara, and the Moroccan side refused to play in substitute kits. The first leg was cancelled outright.
Eight days later, on 28 April 2024, USM Alger refused to take the field for the second leg in protest, leading CAF to award the tie to RS Berkane, who went on to win the final. The Court of Arbitration for Sport later ruled, in February 2025, that the map itself constituted political propaganda and breached competition regulations, though the ruling arrived too late to change the actual result. CAF has since introduced rules banning political messaging on kit designs across its competitions.
A Rivalry That Rarely Gets To Just Be Football
What makes Algeria vs Morocco different from most football rivalries is how consistently the fixture gets interrupted by something entirely outside the sport, whether that is a closed border affecting travelling fans, a severed diplomatic relationship, or a shirt design that turns a football match into a legal dispute at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Few rivalries anywhere in world football carry this much weight before a ball is even kicked.
Read More: Algeria’s 2019 AFCON Triumph: Inside an Unbeaten Run to the Title shows what Algerian football looks like when the story is purely about results on the pitch, a rare thing when Morocco is the opponent.
For continental competitions where these two teams continue to cross paths, the AFCON hub on TuSportNews and its linked AI Predictions page track fixtures and forecasts as they are confirmed, while the broader AI Predictions hub covers match forecasts across every league the site currently follows.
Why This Rivalry Is Unlikely To Cool Down Soon
Algeria and Morocco are both genuinely strong football nations, each capable of competing at World Cups and dominating AFCON campaigns on their own merits, which only raises the stakes whenever their paths cross. With the land border still closed after more than three decades and diplomatic relations showing no real sign of restarting, the football rivalry looks set to keep absorbing the same political tension it has carried for years, whether that shows up as a contested goal, a visa dispute, or a shirt seized at customs before a ball is ever kicked.