RABAH
MADJER

Porto entered the final as the underdog. Bayern Munich, coached by Udo Lattek, had won the Bundesliga and were favoured by every European football publication of the spring. The Porto side under Artur Jorge had reached the final after group-stage progress and a semi-final win over Dynamo Kyiv. The Vienna final on 27 May 1987 was Porto's first European Cup final appearance.

Bayern took the lead through Ludwig Kögl in the 25th minute. Porto played the next 50 minutes chasing the game. In the 77th minute, Paulo Futre carried the ball into the Bayern penalty area on the left, played a low ball across the six-yard box. Madjer, ten yards out and with his back to goal, flicked the ball with his right heel through the legs of his marker and past Jean-Marie Pfaff into the net. The technique was the audacious choice — a conventional first-time finish would have been a tap-in. The backheel is the move every European Cup highlight reel of the 1980s now opens with.

Madjer was not finished. Two minutes later he set up Juary for the winner with another inside-the-box flick; Porto won 2-1. Pelé's reported assessment of the back-heel — 'It would have been the greatest goal I have ever seen, if he had not looked back at it' — has stuck to the goal as folklore. Madjer also won the 1987 Intercontinental Cup against Peñarol and the 1987 UEFA Super Cup against Ajax with the same Porto squad; the 1987 calendar year is the most decorated of his career.

Algeria's 1982 World Cup squad under Mahieddine Khalef and Rachid Mekhloufi was the country's first ever tournament side. The group draw paired Algeria with West Germany (reigning European champions), Austria and Chile. Most pre-tournament previews predicted a three-game group exit; the bookmakers had Algeria priced at 200-1 to win Group 2.

The opening fixture on 16 June 1982 at El Molinón in Gijón was Algeria vs West Germany. Madjer scored the opener in the 54th minute, finishing a fast counter-attack with a low strike past Harald Schumacher. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge equalised in the 67th; Lakhdar Belloumi scored the winner two minutes later. The 2-1 result was the first World Cup win by an African nation over a European champion and remains one of the great single-match upsets of the modern tournament.

Algeria's tournament unwound in the controversy of the Disgrace of Gijón — the West Germany vs Austria fixture on 25 June 1982 that ended 1-0 in a way that knocked Algeria out on goal difference. FIFA immediately changed the rules to require all final group-stage matches to kick off simultaneously. Madjer's goal in the opener, alongside Belloumi's winner, stands as the founding moment of African football's modern World Cup era.

Algeria hosted the 1990 AFCON across two cities — Algiers and Annaba — from 2 to 16 March 1990. The tournament format was an eight-team group-and-knockout structure. Algeria topped Group A with wins over Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Egypt; beat Senegal 2-1 in the semi-final; and beat Nigeria 1-0 in the final at Stade 5 Juillet 1962 in Algiers on 16 March 1990. Cherif Oudjani scored the only goal of the final in the 38th minute, in front of more than 105,000 supporters — the largest crowd ever recorded for a continental final at the time.

Madjer was the senior creative figure in Abdelhamid Kermali's side. He scored against Nigeria in the group stage, played a senior role in the semi-final win over Senegal, and was named Best Player of the Tournament after the final. The 1990 title was Algeria's first AFCON crown and the country's first major continental trophy of any kind. The next AFCON title would not arrive until 2019 in Egypt — 29 years later — under Riyad Mahrez and Djamel Belmadi.

Madjer's AFCON record reads three appearances (1980, 1984, 1988, 1990 — runner-up in 1980, third in 1984 and 1988, champion in 1990). His 1990 tournament-winning form, at age 31 and three years removed from the FC Porto European Cup win, is the high point of his international career. The Best Player of the Tournament award in 1990 sits alongside his 1987 CAF African Footballer of the Year as the two senior honours of his playing career.

Madjer signed for FC Porto in 1985 from Racing Club de Paris. The fit was immediate: Artur Jorge's 4-4-2 with Paulo Futre on the left and Juary on the right gave Madjer the central role he wanted. The 1985-86 season produced the Primeira Divisão title and the Taça de Portugal — a domestic double in his first year. 1986-87 produced the European Cup win and the back-heel. 1987-88 produced a second Primeira title.

A brief loan to Valencia CF in 1988 ended with 14 La Liga appearances and 4 goals. Madjer returned to Portugal and finished his Porto contract in 1990-91. A final season at Qatar SC in 1991-92 produced 9 appearances and 6 goals before retirement at age 33.

The coaching career began with the Algeria national-team head-coach role in 1993 — a difficult assignment during the post-1992 political crisis in Algeria. The four stints (1993-95, 1999, 2001-02, 2017-18) followed across the next quarter-century. None produced a major-tournament title; the 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign ended in failure, and the 2017-18 stint was brief. Madjer's senior coaching legacy is overshadowed by Djamel Belmadi's 2019 AFCON-winning side, which assembled three years after Madjer's last national-team appointment.