Footballers aim to draw on spirit of Gillo Pontecorvo’s revolutionary classic ahead of tonight’s match with England When football players seek inspiration they normally opt for a round of golf. Not the Algerians, though. Ahead of their big match with England tonight, the north Africans have made a trip to the cinema to watch a screening of The Battle of Algiers. Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 classic is set during the Algerian war of the 1950s and details the emergence of the native resistance against the imperial French. It’s a gritty, troubling film that shows the moral compromises that war forces on all sides. It’s also over two hours long, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped the Algerians from being inspired. “I had never seen it before. It was very moving, and it was very moving to spend the time together. This is the kind of thing we need to do to feel together,” said Hassan Yebda, the 26-year-old midfielder who played in England last season with Portsmouth. The screening was arranged by Algeria’s coach, Rabah Saâdane, and Yebda believes it will help the side forge a new mentality after losing to Slovenia in their opening World Cup match last Sunday. Yebda compared their new attitude to that which helped Algeria qualify for the World Cup in a playoff with Egypt. “When we were in Sudan we had an obsession to win and that is what enabled us to beat Egypt. Had we lost that match, we would have been eliminated. The same goes for tomorrow. We must go on to the pitch with the same obsession to win.” Quite whether “an obsession to win” would be the message most viewers would take from The Battle of Algiers remains to be seen. Indeed, the movie’s history as an educational tool is a chequered one. It was also the subject of an infamous screening for Pentagon staff shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Algeria World Cup 2010 Algeria World Cup 2010 Group C Paul MacInnes guardian.co.uk
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Algeria prepare for World Cup battle by watching The Battle of Algiers
