Mini football figure - Tunisia

Tunisia

The Tunisian national football team is the selection team of the North African state of Tunisia and is governed by the Fédération Tunisienne de Football. Tunisia participated five times in World Cups and qualified 13 times for the African Championship finals, winning for the first time in 2004. In 2005, Tunisia participated in the Confederations Cup in Germany. In April 2018, they reached 14th place in the FIFA World Ranking, the best position in the association's history.

History

Between 1928 and 1950, Tunisian teams played several matches against the French B team and other French teams. After Tunisia's independence in 1956, more matches followed but were not yet recognised by FIFA. The first FIFA-recognised match took place on 8 March 1959 against Malta and ended 0-0.

Football World Cup 2006

In the qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup, French coach Roger Lemerre's team had progressed past the first round to face Morocco, Kenya, Guinea, Malawi and Botswana in second round Group Five ties. Despite a 2-2 draw against the Morocco team on 8 October 2005, Tunisia managed to win their group and became the fifth African team to travel to Germany for the World Cup, alongside teams from Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Angola.

After a draw against Saudi Arabia (2-2) and two defeats against Spain (1-3) and Ukraine (0-1), the team was eliminated in the preliminary round in third place in the group.

Football World Cup 2018

In the 2018 World Cup qualifiers, they beat Mauritania in the 2nd round and played Congo, Libya and Guinea in the 3rd round. In this round, they qualified directly for the World Cup finals as group winners with four wins and two draws.

At the World Cup finals, they played in World Cup Group G against teams from Belgium, Panama and England after being drawn from Pot 3 in the World Cup draw.

Current

From the beginning of June 2008, the "Eagles of Carthage" were coached by the Portuguese Humberto Coelho, who had already led the Portuguese national football team to the semi-finals of EURO 2000, where he met his predecessor and then coach of the French national football team Roger Lemerre. He was given a three-year contract. However, after failing to qualify for the 2010 World Cup, the two parties parted ways again. In the following four years, there were four different coaches before Dutchman Ruud Krol took over in September 2013. His time in Tunisia ended only a year later and from March 2014 to June 2015, the Belgian Georges Leekens was in charge of the team.

Famous coaches

Since 1956, the Tunisian national football team has been coached by 28 different coaches, in a total of 33 coaching periods. The first person to hold this post was the Tunisian Rachid Turki. Milan Kristić, the first foreign coach, followed as early as 1960. To date, the team has been coached by 15 foreign football coaches. The only German to hold this post was Eckhard Krautzun, who briefly oversaw the team's fortunes in 2001. With six years in a row, Frenchman Roger Lemerre is the record holder in this position. Tunisians Youssef Zouaoui and Ameur Hizem served two terms in charge of the Tunisian federation. The only foreigners to coach the team more than once were Croatian Radojica Radojičić and Pole Antoni Piechniczek.