+18 | Commercial Content | T&C's Apply | Play Responsibly | Publishing Principles
Rhulani Mokwena of MC Alger 16-9GOAL GFX
Celine Abrahams

Rhulani Mokwena faces MC Alger’s pressure-cooker: Is he boarding a rocket ship or strapping himself to a time-bomb?

After a bruising stint at Wydad, Mokwena now finds himself at the helm of one of North Africa’s most storied and most volatile football institutions.

On paper, it’s a dream gig. “Le Doyen” are back-to-back champions, their loyal and distinct El Bahja and Green Angels pack over 40,000 fans into the Ali La Pointe Stadium, and Algerian state-owned energy firm, Sonatrach’s oil millions mean the paycheques never bounce. But beneath the surface, this is a club where ambition often combusts into chaos.

The expectations? Sky-high. Nothing less than a domestic three-peat and a historic first CAF Champions League semi-final will do. And history offers a warning: 17 coaches have come and gone in the past seven years. Contracts don’t expire, they get torn to shreds.

MC Alger might be the ultimate coaching escalator. The only question: is it taking Mokwena up… or straight down?

Here, GOAL unpacks what awaits the former Mamelodi Sundowns and Orlando Pirates mastermind as he steps into one of North African football’s most demanding jobs.

Follow GOAL on WhatsApp 🟢📱

  • Rhulani Mokwena of Wydad CasablancaWydad Casablanca on Facebook

    A club where one season feels like dog-years

    Scroll through MC Alger’s official list of managers and you need coffee before you reach 2018. Since Bernard Casoni was fired in August 2018, the job has changed hands 19 times, caretaker stints included; only Patrice Beaumelle (March 2023-Dec 2024) and Khaled Ben Yahia (Dec 2024-June 2025) survived a full calendar year. 

    For context, that is a higher churn rate than Watford, Palermo and Chippa United combined across the same span. Consistency is prized on the pitch, chaos seems institutional off it.

    • Advertisement
  • MC Alger Players

    Titles are non-negotiable

    The Algerian League is no playground. JS Kabylie (14 titles) remain the national yardstick, ES Sétif have eight crowns and two African stars on the badge, USM Alger own eight domestic titles and a CAF Confederation Cup, while CR Belouizdad’s 2020-2023 four-peat pushed them to ten championships. 

    MC Alger’s back-to-back triumphs in 2024 and 2025 — their eighth and ninth overall — merely put them third on the all-time chart. Inside the club, finishing first is framed as “defending our birthright”, not winning a race. Lose your grip and the terrain gets hostile fast.


  • Orlando Pirates vs MC Alger scuffles Backpage

    The quarter-final glass ceiling and Orlando Pirates PTSD

    The two sides of MC Alger fans, El Bahja and Green Angels, still chant about 1976, the year they lifted Africa’s biggest prize (known back then as African Cup of Champions Clubs), but modern MC Alger haven’t cracked the last-four since the CAF Champions League adopted its current format. 

    Last season’s campaign ended in heartbreak when Pirates parked the bus in Soweto to squeeze through 1-0 on aggregate. 

    The board would have probably made a semi-final clause explicit in Mokwena’s deal. For a coach whose Wydad tenure nose-dived under similar “win-yesterday” demands, the déjà vu is unmistakable.

    • ENJOYED THIS STORY?

    Add GOAL.com as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting

  • Rhulani Mokwena, May 2025Backpage

    Lost in translation: Arabic, French and the fine art of dressing-room diplomacy

    Algiers speaks a cocktail of Darija-Arabic and French; English is rare outside expat circles. At Wydad, Mokwena later admitted the language gap “slowed the learning curve” of his positional-play sessions and fed the narrative that he was aloof. 

    MC Alger’s technical staff is again predominantly francophone, and several senior players are products of domestic academies that rarely use English. Unless Mokwena sharpens his French fast, the whiteboard might still need subtitles.

  • Rhulani Mokwena, May 2025Backpage

    Career catapult or career crater?

    Mokwena’s supporters frame MC Alger as an express lane to Europe: win a treble, ride the club’s high CAF coefficient and scouts will notice.

    His detractors counter that Algeria’s bench is a “blender” that spits coaches out with reputations damaged. After the psychological battering he confessed to in Casablanca, even friends worry he might be leaping from the frying pan into the Sonatrach flare stack.

  • Rhulani Mokwena, June 2025Backpage

    Dive deeper

0