Abdelaziz Ben Tifour

Abdelaziz Ben Tifour

File:Abdelaziz-Ben-Tifour.jpg
Personal information
Full name	Abdelaziz Ben Tifour
Date of birth	(1927-07-25)25 July 1927
Place of birth	Hussein Dey, Algeria
Date of death
Place of death	Algiers, Algeria
Height
Position(s)	Forward
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1945–1946	Espérance Tunis	–	(–)
1946–1948	CS Hammam-Lif	–	(–)
1948–1953	Nice	129	(34)
1953–1955	Troyes	65	(15)
1955–1958	Monaco	86	(13)
1962–1963	USM Alger	–	(–)
International career
1952–1957	France	4	(0)
1958–1962	FLN	-	(-)
Managerial career
1959–1962	FLN
1961–1962	US Tunis
1969	Algeria
1969–1970	JS Kabylie
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Abdelaziz Ben Tifour (Arabic: عبدالعزيز بن طيفور‎‎; (1927-07-25)25 July 1927 – 19 November 1970(1970-11-19)) was a professional French-Algerian footballer who played as a forward.

Life and career

He was a pioneer of Algerian football playing in Tunisia and France in the 40s and 50s as well as establishing the first Algerian national team with two other FLN activists featuring ten players in France’s provisional World Cup squad on the eve of the finals in Sweden. One of those players was Ben Tifour himself, who had played for the French national team on four occasions including one appearance at the 1954 World Cup.

Born in Hussein-Dey, the youngster began making headlines for Tunisian club Al-Taraji (“Hope”) or Espérance as an eighteen-year-old with his elder brother Mustapha, in a team coached by the legendary Algerian Cheikh Habib Draoua. After only a year with the Tunis based club; the brothers and fellow Algerian player Ben Battouche were tempted by a generous offer from rival team Club Sportif de Hammam-Lif and helped the team to two consecutive Tunisia cups in 1947 and 1948. In the summer of 1948, he moved to Europe to play for French first division club OGC Nice, making his debut in a 1–1 draw with Red Star Paris and by the time Ben Tifour played at the 1954 FIFA World Cup in Switzerland in a 3–2 win over Mexico; he had already won two league titles and a French Cup with OGC Nice. He moved to Troyes AC after six seasons with Nice in 1954 and then signed for AS Monaco in 1956, which would be his last club in Europe. In total, he made 280 appearances in the French top division, scoring 62 goals. He returned to Tunis in 1958 to form the FLN Algerian national team.

On his arrival in Tunis, Ben Tifour was met by FLN officials who did not believe in the team, thinking they would not stand up to the world’s best team, this only drove the players to greater things. Players like Ben Tifour, Rachid Mekloufi and Mustapha Zitouni proved them wrong with wins over Yugoslavia and credible draws with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In the space of four years, Ben Tifour one of the founders behind the formation of the team would captain and later coach the team touring the world from the Far East to Eastern Europe. When Algeria was granted independence in 1962, the 33-year-old Ben Tifour unlike Mekloufi and Ahmed Oudjani who moved back to play in Europe, returned to his homeland to take up a player-coach role at Union Sportive Musulmane d'Alger leading them to the first Algerian championship in 1963.

Ben Tifour died at the age of only 43 while he was coach at Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie during the 1970–1971 season.

Clubs

• Espérance Sportive de Tunis (1945–1946)
• Club Sportif de Hammam Lif (1946–1948)
• OGC Nice (1948–1954)
• Association Sportive Troyenne Savinienne (1954–1956)
• AS Monaco (1956–1958)
• FLN Equipe (1958–1962)
• USMA, Union Sportive de la Medina d'Alger (1962–1963)

External links

• Profile on French federation official site