Football: Afcon qualifiers - Seychelles to play Africa’s top side Algeria this weekend |10 June 2015

The Seychelles national football team left Seychelles on Monday for Algeria for arguably their biggest match in recent history.
Seychelles are ranked 166 places below Algeria, who are the number one ranked African nation and 21st worldwide.

After a great run in the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil last year, Algeria are surely now a force to be reckoned with in world football and with players like Carl Medjani and Essaïd Belkalem from Trabzonspor (Turkey), Faouzi Ghoulam of Napoli (Italy), Yacine Brahimi of Porto (Portugal), Nabil Bentaleb of Tottenham Hotspurs (England) and Islam Slimani of Sporting Lisbon (Portugal) they will no doubt be a very tough test for Seychelles.

The teams will meet in the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) group J qualifiers where Seychelles have also been drawn alongside Ethiopia and Lesotho.

The biggest disappointment for the team however is that head coach Ulrich Mathiot is not accompanying the team to Algeria and he will also miss the team’s away game against Mozambique later this month in the 2016 African Nations Championship (Chan) qualifiers.

Assistant coach Cliff Nolin and goalkeeper coach Danny Laurette will take charge of the side for those two games, while coach Mathiot will be attending his other commitments as a Caf instructor.

Seychelles will face Algeria this weekend on June 13 at the Stade Mustapha Tchaker in Blida, Algeria and will then travel to Mozambique for the 2016 African Nations Championship (Chan) southern qualifiers on June 20.

Seychelles will then host Mozambique in the return leg at Stad Linite on July 4.
After the disappointment of losing to neighbours Mauritius at the 2015 Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) Cup by fielding a very defensive team, Seychelles will be hoping to give a better account of themselves against a very tough opponent.

S. N.