Physical Address
Indirizzo: Via Mario Greco 60, Buttigliera Alta, 10090, Torino, Italy
In the Algerian championship, there are clubs, even disappeared or relegated to the lower divisions, forgotten by media interests, and far from the limelight, leave no one indifferent, so rich, dense and captivating is their history.
Their managers, their players and their technical staff had made the heyday of many big clubs, such as Mouloudia of Algiers, USMAlgiers, Waboufarik, Mouloudia of Constantine, USMAnnaba… These clubs which have now disappeared from the media radars but are still ‘alive’ are, among others, the Guelma Squadron (ESG), for the eastern region of the country, and the legendary Mitidja club, USM Blida. Mustapha, my friend and neighborhood neighbor, the sumptuous Zabana de Blida, a follower of El Djemiaa, had been pestering me for a while to talk about the prestigious past of the USMB in a sports page of the national press, lamenting that his favorite club was floundering in the lower divisions. And, at Place Tout or at Placette Laarbeb (the former place of the Arabs) or at Bab Essebt (this old 16th century gate from which we used to go to the weekly souk which only took place on a Saturday, on the road to La Chiffa), in short, in all the strongholds of lovers of the round ball and the prestigious Muslim club of the city of Roses, we languish and we begin to dream of the return of the blessed times of the major football matches and prestigious clubs which faced the local club, in the colors white and green. Doesn’t the city have two large stadiums, including the legendary Brakni or Mustapha Tchaker?
The USMB is a history, and this history was born during colonization, between the two great wars, in 1932, around ten years after the birth of Mouloudia of Algiers, CS Constantine (1926) and the Muslim Sports Union of Oran (1926). The Muslim club, which came to bring a little balm to the hearts of the Algerians who toiled for the settlers and the rich Europeans in a rich and fertile plain of Mitidja offered by the colonial administration, upon the entry into Algiers in June 1830 of the Duke of Bourmont, to the rich speculators, capitalists and other French settlers.
We can say, like the Mouloudia of Algiers and the other Muslim clubs born just after the First World War, that the USMBlida, through sport, also had a political, cultural agenda of awareness and support of young people for the struggle and opposition through sport to the socially crushing domination of the settler. This USMB had momentum and presence, and from its first years, between 1930 and 1940, El Djemiaa was going to make a name for itself and conquer the hearts of the Blidéns, the guys from Boufarik, EL Affroun, Hadjout (the former Marengo where Camus killed his mother in a shabby hospital), Mouzaïa, Miliana… It was then the great Muslim club of Mitidja which would, in the mid-1940s, reach the Honorary Division, a level of the big pied-noir clubs and join the MCA. At that time, that of the 1940s-1950s, there were notably Baldo, Zaragoci, Abdelkader Mazouz, Maâmar Ousser, Mustapha Begga, M’hamed Sebkhaoui or Ahmed Zahzah, Rachid Hadji, Boutata (goalkeeper) or Mokhtar Dahmane, while the former MCA virtuoso, Smail Khabatou took the technical helm and as trainer Rabah Hamou. Allah Yerhemhum. We will not mention all the former players of the most emblematic club of Mitidja and the central region of the country, out of respect to all those who have proudly worn the colors of the club, from its birth at the height of the colonial night to the present day. In 1956, El Djemiaa suspends all competition in the championship, just like Mouloudia of Algiers, because at the time they were the only two Muslim clubs which played at the higher level, the Honorary Division with the European clubs.
After independence, the club experienced ups and downs, with resounding successes, but, above all, several demotions….Until the last,….How far away are the words of this beautiful song by Hadj Mahfoudh about the USMB and the MCA….Cry the USMBlidean over your past fallen so low… Ahhh as Hadj Mahfoud said in his song..In challah Ya Rebbi, Enssar l’USMB, djemiaa islamya fi chamal Ifriquia…We must listen again to this beautiful song dedicated to the Muslim club in the town of Sidi Ahmed El Kebir…to understand all the feeling, the love we have for this club like no other, that of a town which served, after the fall of Granada in January 1492, as a refuge for Andalusian refugees, and which, long before the arrival of French colonization, had radiated throughout Algeria with its culinary, musical, religious art (mosques in Blida Hanafi had existed until recently) and cultural….
And then this revolutionary club, where Martyrs of the revolution like Mustapha Tchaker, the Brakni brothers and so many others had evolved, had carried within it all the misfortunes of the ”Wretched of the Earth”, of those who had passed through the Blida psychiatric hospital (HPB) due to the colonial system which crushed souls and consciences, and that a young medical team, under the direction of Frantz Fanon and his assistant Abderrahmane Aziz, tried to ease the suffering. Was it then surprising, if not incongruous, to see, every Sunday, the warriors of the USMBlidéenne subduing and suppressing the cackle of the European clubs… It was, on a football stadium, another war that the USMB was waging, until reaching the highest level, and joining Mouloudia of Algiers in the Honorary Division… What a beautiful epic….
Story of a descent into hell
In 1947, the Blidienne Muslim Sports Union gained access to the prestigious honorary division, where the major blackfoot or European clubs played during the colonial era, including ASSaint-Eugène, the GSA or the formidable Galia, the RUA of Albert Camus or the FCBlidenne. The USMB thus joins the MCA, the other Muslim club, which brings thousands of supporters to each of its matches.
The two Muslim clubs, that of the Casbah of Algiers and that of Douerates, the old medina of Blida with its legendary Ben Saadoune mosque, will then evolve in a division where the first places are expensive, and both Mouloudia and USMB lend a hand against the European clubs. Thus in 1952, the USMB was inevitably to backslide, but its fate was in the hands of Mouloudia, who then crossed swords against the formidable GSA, the powerful European club of the largest landowner in the Algerian Sahel, Henry Borgeaud, who owned, in addition to the Trappe estate (Cheraga) and its vineyards, the Bastos tobacco and matches factory, on rue Mizon, in Bab El Oued.
Facing the GSA therefore means confronting the bourgeois and extremist circles of the pieds noirs, but no matter, the MCA was already a large and respected club, with a favorite ground, the Saint-Eugène stadium, which it shared with the ASSE of Zouba and Mohamed Maouche. So that year, Mouloudia won an absolutely fantastic, historic match by beating Galia (1-0) in a packed Municipal stadium, almost 20,000 spectators. A victory which gave birth to a lot of pride within Algiers families with this magnificent goal from the late Smail Khabatou, who would later join USM Blida and wreak havoc in the defenses of French clubs.
This victory for the MCA over the GSA allowed the USM Blidéenne to remain in the Honorary Division. And, a week after the historic match against the French club, Mouloudia lost to the favorite club of Mitidja (1-2) within which there were talented players, both Algerian and European, but closer to Muslims than to the black feet like the goalkeeper Zaragoci or the player Baldo. And, in this Honorary Division of the 1940s-1950s of the Algiers League, there were then two Muslim clubs, the MCA and the USMB for ten French clubs, including the GSA, ASSE, OHD and Racing Universitaire d’Alger (RUA).
The USMB, it must be said and repeated, was a great club, perhaps much more so during the colonial period with talented players, than after independence. Born in the turmoil of the pre-Second World War, the favorite club of Mitidja, of all the towns and villages in the south of the capital, as far as Djelfa, Médéa, Miliana, the USMB was one of the great Muslim clubs, with the MCA in the center of the country, which had fought colonization on the football fields and on the political, cultural and artistic level.
Because the pretty town of Blida, El Belda for its natives, had talented artists like Hadj Mahfoudh, Abderrahmane Aziz, Mohamed Touri, Bachtarzi, Stambouli, Bourahla, who were also great supporters and patrons of the USMB, a club which had in front of it the rival local club, that of the Europeans, the Football Club Bliden which had, it must be admitted, excellent players, including Muslims.
The club’s career has, however, been punctuated by grandiose periods and thunderous successes, but also by dry periods and scarcity. Born in 1932, after a period of maturation which lasted four years (1928), the USMB participated in its first North African Cup in 1933, and, in 1938, it reached division 2 (Algiers departmental league). In 1941, she won the Algiers Division 1 championship, then won the Algiers departmental cup in 1945, and, in 1947, finally reached the Division of Honor, joining the brothers of the MCA. It should be noted that during the colonial era, the only two Muslim, Algerian clubs were the MCA and the USMB in the Algiers league. Success followed one another for the Blidene team, that of the Muslims, with a semi-final of the North African Cup in 1954, and the end of the competitions in 1956.
After independence, the club experienced various adventures, with this relegation to D2 in 1967, then in 1972, accession to Division 1. At the end of many setbacks in the 1970s-1980s after a name change, the USMB returned to division 1 in 1992, and played the final of the Algerian Cup in 1996, and, in the process, recorded its first participation in an Arab cup. But, as if the club was damned, the USMB plunged back into its failings and regressed for the third time in its post-independence history to national 2, in 1996. A burst of pride or a flash in the pan, the Blidean club returned to D1 a year later, in 1997, and, in 2003, narrowly missed the Algerian championship, finishing at the foot of the podium. Between 2004 and 2019, the year of the second relegation to division 3, the USMB will experience a painful descent into hell.
Today, the club dear to Blidiens, symbol of this city so welcoming and so imbued with empathy for its visitors and admirers of its singers, like Dahmane Ben Achour, nicknamed the Nightingale of Blida, Hadj Mahfoudh author of the famous song about the USMB in the 1940s, painters like Martinez or Baya, and its actors including Abderrahmane Aziz or Touri, is tossed around in inter-wilayas, and work hard to find the elite. A waste!
Victim of its history, its past and its unfinished reins, the great club of Mitidja must make a start, wake up and go to conquer accession among the clubs of the national footballing elite. It is the lesser evil that we wish for this club where great players played, who had raised the Algerian standard high on the football fields both during the colonial era with a sparkling Smail Khabatou, and after independence.
It is just necessary that the spirit of the Founders regains its rights among a club dear to all lovers of the round ball on this side of Africa.