Abdelaziz Ben Tifour

Abdelaziz Ben Tifour
Personal information
Date of birth	25 July 1927
Place of birth	Hussein Dey, Algeria
Date of death	19 November 1970 (aged 43)
Place of death	Algiers, Algeria
Height	1.74 m (5 ft 9 in)
Position(s)	Midfield
Senior career*
Years	Team
1945–1946	Espérance Tunis
1946–1948	CS Hammam-Lif
1948–1953	Nice
1953–1955	AS Troyes-Savinienne
1955–1958	Monaco
1962–1963	USM Alger
International career
1952–1957	France
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 – (1970-11-19)19 November 1970) was a professional French-Algerian footballer who played as a midfielder.

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.^{[citation needed]} One of those players was Ben Tifour, who had played for the France national team on four occasions including one appearance at the 1954 World Cup.^{[citation needed]}

Born in Hussein-Dey. 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 AS Troyes-Savinienne 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.^[1] He returned to Tunis in 1958 to form the FLN Algerian national team.^{[citation needed]}

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 USM Alger leading them to the first Algerian championship in 1963.

Ben Tifour died at the age of 43 while he was coach at JS Kabylie during the 1970–1971 season.^{[citation needed]}