"In 1958 a group of well-known professional football players from Algeria sneaked out of France and gathered in Tunisia to create an F.L.N. football team. Traveling to Eastern Europe and Asia, they used the sport as a weapon of war, a tool of diplomacy, and an act of political imagination. When the team played, the flag of the revolutionary movement was raised and its anthem sung, and imagining that Algeria would one day be independent became a little bit easier."
— Laurent Dubois, Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France
