Algeria

Algeria’s tournament will be decided in Kansas City on June 27. Group J starts with Algeria-Argentina on June 16 — a likely defeat that nobody back home will hold against the team — and the real campaign begins five days later in San Francisco against Jordan, then closes with Austria. Three points from Jordan are essentially mandatory; the Austria game is the genuine equation. Win it and Algeria are out of the group. Lose it and they are dependent on the four best third-placed sides across 12 groups in the expanded 48-team format.

The good news is that Algeria are demonstrably better than they were at AFCON 2023. Vladimir Petković has finally settled the goalkeeper position (Alexis Guendouz is the likely starter despite the Luca Zidane curiosity), Aït-Nouri at Manchester City is a top-five-league left-back, and the Amoura-Mahrez combination produced 18 goals between them in qualifying. There is a coherent way of playing — a 4-3-3 with Bennacer dictating, fullbacks providing width, and inverted forwards creating overloads in the half-spaces. Petković took Switzerland past France at Euro 2020; the tactical infrastructure is built for tournament football.

The bad news is that this group is unforgiving. Austria are technically better than the team that lost to Bosnia in 1982 — the only previous Algeria-Austria meeting — and Argentina, regardless of Messi’s minutes, will get nine points unless something extraordinary happens. The realistic ceiling is a round-of-16 exit to a side like Germany, Spain, or one of the host countries; the realistic floor is third place and elimination on goal difference. The most likely outcome is a brutal head-to-head with Austria for second. For Riyad Mahrez, who has confirmed this is his last tournament after captaining the country since 2017, anything beyond the group stage would be a fitting close to one of the most consequential international careers in modern African football.

Twelve years after Vahid Halilhodžić’s 2014 squad ran Germany to extra time in the round of 16 — and only one year after the humiliation of going out in the group stage at the 2023 AFCON in Ivory Coast — Algeria are back. The federation’s response to that AFCON failure was decisive: dismiss Djamel Belmadi, hire Vladimir Petković, and rebuild around a younger, more European-based core. The man who took Switzerland to the Euro 2020 quarter-finals was given an open mandate. He used it to extract 10 goals in 10 qualifiers from Mohamed Amoura — more than Mohamed Salah, more than anyone in African qualifying.

In possession, Algeria look like a hybrid of a top-half Ligue 1 side and a Bundesliga press-resistance project. Bennacer drops to receive between the centre-backs, Aït-Nouri pushes up like he does for Manchester City, and the front three of Mahrez, Maza, and Amoura rotates fluidly. Mahrez, now 35 and at Saudi club Al-Ahli, has consciously retreated to a half-space orchestrator role: less of the explosive carry, more of the floated cross. Amoura is the volume scorer. The young Ibrahim Maza, who made the move from Hertha BSC to Leverkusen in 2025, is the wild card — left-footed, comfortable receiving on the half-turn, and increasingly trusted by Petković in deeper positions.

The concerns are the same ones that have always shadowed Algeria: a defence that can be punctured on transition, and a goalkeeper position without a settled No. 1. Petković has rotated between Alexis Guendouz, Luca Zidane (Zinedine’s son, who switched from France), and Zakaria Bouhalfaya across the cycle. The centre-back pairing of Mandi and Bensebaini has experience but is increasingly outpaced against quick centre-forwards — exactly what Lautaro Martínez and Julián Álvarez are.

Group J is a brutal draw. Argentina are the defending champions; Austria are a top-25 FIFA side coached by one of European football’s great pressing strategists; Jordan are a debutant with the best player on the pitch in their captain. Realistically, Algeria need to win one of Austria or Jordan and either beat the other or rely on the third-place table to advance — exactly the kind of group where Mahrez’s farewell narrative either becomes a romantic memory or a quiet, painful exit.

Vladimir Petković was born in Sarajevo in 1963, played briefly as a midfielder in the Yugoslav second division, and built his coaching career across Switzerland — at Lugano, Bellinzona, Sion, and Young Boys — before his breakthrough season at Lazio in 2012-13, where he beat Roma 1-0 in the Coppa Italia final. That single Roman derby trophy bought him enough credibility that the Swiss FA hired him in 2014, and the next seven years redefined what Switzerland could be at major tournaments.

His Switzerland teams reached the round of 16 at the 2018 World Cup and Euro 2016 before producing the country’s greatest-ever tournament result at Euro 2020: a penalty-shootout victory over France in the last 16 in Bucharest. They went out only when Spain edged them in another shootout at the quarter-finals. Three knockout rounds in three majors is not what Switzerland had ever done before, and it remains the platform on which Petković’s reputation rests. A short, unhappy spell at Ligue 1’s Bordeaux followed in 2022-23; the club was relegated and he left. When Algeria sacked Djamel Belmadi in January 2024 after their AFCON disaster, Petković was hired within five weeks.

His Algeria has been a careful rebuild. Petković favours a 4-3-3 with an inverted-winger right (Mahrez), an overlapping-fullback left (Aït-Nouri), and a controlling 6-8-8 midfield with Bennacer as the conductor. He has been willing to bring in dual-eligible players from European systems — Luca Zidane, Ramy Bensebaini, Houssem Aouar — and equally willing to give domestic-based youth like Ibrahim Maza their first senior caps. The October 2025 qualifying campaign closed with eight straight wins; the team’s loss to Guinea in his first competitive match feels distant.

The Algerian press has not always been kind. He was criticised for tactical conservatism in the 2025 friendly against Uruguay, and his Bordeaux baggage was used against him during the first call-ups. But the qualifying results spoke for themselves, and the man who took the world’s smallest UEFA nation past France at a major tournament is now being asked to do something similar with Algeria — beat one of Argentina or Austria in Group J. His record at majors says it would be foolish to count him out.