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 Chetali withTunisia in the 1970s | |||
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Abdelmajid Al-Chetali | ||
| Date of birth | (1939-07-04)4 July 1939 (age 86) | ||
| Place of birth | Sousse, Tunisia | ||
| Height | 1.77 m (5 ft 10 in)[1] | ||
| Position | Midfielder[1] | ||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1957–1968 | Étoile du Sahel | ||
| International career | |||
| 1959–1965 | Tunisia | 70 | (4) |
| Managerial career | |||
| 1970–1975 | Étoile du Sahel | ||
| 1975–1978 | Tunisia | ||
| 1979–1980 | Al Ain | ||
| 1983–1985 | Al-Wehda[2] | ||
| 1988 | Bahrain | ||
| 2004–2005 | Étoile du Sahel | ||
| * Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
Abdelmajid Al-Chetali (Arabic:عبد المجيد الشتالي; born 4 July 1939) is a Tunisianfootball coach and former player who played 70 games with thenational team and scored four goals. He also participated in the1960 Summer Olympics.[3]
He is considered one of the characters who shaped and prolonged the legend of theÉtoile Sportive du Sahel (nicknamed Majda). He received only one yellow card during his career.
As a manager, he led them in their first ever World Cup appearance in1978, where Tunisia became the first African team to win a World Cup match, beatingMexico 3–1, and making FIFA increase the number of World Cup slots in the African continent from one to two. During his managerial career, he was in charge of two national teams: theTunisian andBahraini[4] national football teams. He also managed his home clubÉtoile du Sahel[5] and achieved good results with it.
Born inSousse into a family of footballers, Chetali began his career at the Corniche and joined theEtoile Sportive du Sahel (ESS) in 1957 to the position ofmidfielder and team captain.
He started for the first time in the national team byYugoslav coachMilan Kristić as a semi-offensive (between the attacking midfielder and the center forward) and he imposed himself in the Tunisian midfield game.
He competed in the1960 Summer Olympics,[6] but his team lost all of their games and did not score goals. In 1961, he participated in the1962 African Cup of Nations qualification and qualified Tunisia againstNigeria by scoring away with a goal in the 65th minute, but he missed the finals of the competition because he was a victim as few of his teammates of aMalaria crisis. He nevertheless participated in the1963 African Cup of Nations after having played and lost the final of the Friendship Games inDakar againstSenegal.
At the1965 African Cup of Nations held in Tunisia, he was captain of the selection. His team did a great competition before reaching the final againstGhana on 21 November. He scored a goal, which allowed Tunisia to equalize, but Ghana finally won the competition afterextra time.
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He left the Étoile du Sahel in 1968 and returned as a coach from 1970 to 1975. He made good results winning theTunisian League andMaghreb Champions Cup in 1972 and twoTunisian Cups in 1974 and 1975. He graduated from theCologne Higher Institute (Germany) in 1974, so he was called in January 1975 to coach the national team. At the1978 African Cup of Nations, he reached the semi-final but left the competition with a two-year exclusion from theAfrican Cup of Nations for unsportsmanlike behavior.
However, the team qualified for the first time for the World Cup finals in1978, becoming the first African team to win a match (againstMexico by 3 goals to 1). However, his team didn't pass the first round because, after this victory, the Tunisians lost their second match againstPoland by 1 goal to 0. They then draw withGermany on a virgin score. But this relatively good performance allows the African continent to benefit from an additional place for the1982 FIFA World Cup, with two places.
With this great achievement and despite the many offers, he preferred to stay away from this training, but he had a short experience in9th Arabian Gulf Cup withBahrain national football team reaching the semi-finals. He returned toÉtoile du Sahel as a coach for a few months in 2004, replacing Mrad Mahjoub, who was forced to resign after the elimination of the team in the Tunisian Cup semi-final. He achieved the second place in2004 CAF Champions League after losing against the Nigerian SideEnyimba withpenalties.
He has been a sports consultant for the American TV channelESPN since 1998. Chetali succeeds in establishing himself as one of the best Arab consultants and a very popular columnist of Tunisian television. Indeed, he is one of the first Arab to analyze a football game on a television screen after introducing a model of land on which there are dolls players. He analyzed threeWorld Cups, fourAfrican Cups of Nations, twoAsian Cups, threeCopa América as well as theItalian,Spanish andEnglish Leagues and theUEFA Champions League inAljazeera Sport.
In March 2007, he was appointed technical advisor to theSaudi Arabian Football Federation.
| Team | From | To | Record | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G | W | D | L | Win % | Ref | |||
| Tunisia | 12 February 1975 | 20 December 1978 | 52 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 034.62 | |
| Total | 52 | 18 | 18 | 16 | 034.62 | — | ||
Étoile du Sahel
Tunisia
Étoile du Sahel
Tunisia
Bahrain
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