A searing investigation into the (mis) management of Tunisian football
On January 18 this year, Senegal won the African Cup of Nations in a 1-0 victory over Morocco in the final. Celebrations in Dakar; commiserations in Casablanca. But in Tunisia, the failure of the Eagles of Carthage (as the national team is known) to make it into even the quarter finals after losing against Mali has produced something different: a wave of recrimination about the state of Tunisian football.
A two-part report by Matteo Trabelsi and Romain Molina for the Tunis-based outlet Inkyfada suggests the malaise in the country’s football extends far beyond the pitch. It is a story of governance failures, financial mismanagement, and commercial and personal interests taking precedence over the game’s interests. At its heart are three people: Sami Trabelsi, the coach of the national team; Hussein Jenayah, the vice president of the Tunisian Football Federation (the FTF); and Safwen Aidi, cast as the man in the shadows, the “opérateur discret” behind the system.
Tunisia was forced out of the African Nations’ Cup on Saturday, January 3. Sami Trabelsi was fired in a Facebook post the next day. But Inkyfada suggests the higher-ups in the FTF had wanted to get rid of him long before that. A 1-1 draw against Brazil in November 2025 gave him a temporary reprieve.
But was he ever really in charge, anyhow? Hussein Jenayah, FTF vice president, was said to have decided who should be the team captain, countermanding Trabelsi’s choice. (This was apparently also the interventionist approach of Wadie Jary, a former FTF president now languishing in jail for corruption).
The sense that something is wrong in Tunisian football is “not just the fans or on social media”, Inkyfada reports. Coming off the pitch after the Mali game, midfielder Hannibal Mejbri called the situation of Tunisian football “sad”.
The first article highlights an embarrassing moment in the stands during the Tunisia-Algeria match of the African Nations’ Cup, when Jenayah allegedly attempted to enter the VVIP area and was rebuffed by security guards, prompting him to insult them. (Two protocol officials – one Algerian, one from Morocco – subsequently sent reports to the African Football Federation, the CAF). Later, Jenayah reportedly told a CAF disciplinary hearing that he was looking for a place for the Tunisian ambassador. But photos from the game showed she was already in her allotted place. Inkyfada suggests Jenayah simply wanted to get close to the president of the African Football Federation. Why?
The need for such proximity is perhaps related to the second major point of the article: the emergence of a network of individuals and commercial enterprises across African football, attempting to reap rich rewards from organising international matches.
Two companies are said to be at the heart of it: Sportedge and Africa TMS. Between 2022 and 2023, Inkyfada reports, they signed exclusivity deals with the football federations of at least seven countries across the continent: Madagascar, Togo, Niger, Benin, Liberia, Botswana and Djibouti. Safwen Aidi is said to be the key figure, working in conjunction with FIFA agent Moez Brahmi. One example: the FTF was charged one hundred thousand Tunisian Dinars for the Burkina Faso team to stay in the Sheraton in Tunis in June 2025, at a time when the federation said it didn’t have enough money to hire a foreign trainer. Who benefits? Financially, the whole setup is “without transparency”, says Inkyfada.
The article concludes with a quote from an unnamed individual close to the federation: “Getting rid of the trainer was an attempt to respond to the immediate sense of anger [at Tunisia’s early departure from the African Nations’ Cup]. But as long as these mechanisms continue to shape the governance of Tunisian football, Tunisia will be locked into a cycle of repeated failure”.
The second article in the series – largely an expansion of the first – claims the first had its own effect on the workings of the FTF. The first article was published on January 6. A meeting between the FTF and the sports minister was scheduled for the next day. In the wake of the article, Inkyfada reports that officials close to the Tunisian President intervened to push the meeting back by two days while the issues raised in the article were discussed internally. When it finally happened, Inkyfada’s insider reported that the meeting lasted six hours and yielded no new information.
Returning to the tournament, the second article suggests that Jenayah decided which players should participate, not with a view to winning matches, but to maintaining relationships with clubs and individuals. (The article notes that one player was looking for a last contract in the Gulf; keeping his role in the Tunisian team would help him do that). It claims that Jenayah will face no sanction for what happened during the Tunisia-Algeria game, citing phone calls from those close to him to the CAF. In the meantime, Safwen Aidi is said to be behind manoeuvring for Jenayah to be elected president of the CAF in 2027.
The charge sheet against the FTF is long. A case in which a leading midfielder wasn’t selected on the basis of what the FTF claimed was an injury, despite not having consulted his team. (The article suggests the spurious nature of FTF’s fitness assessment by noting that the footballer, who plays in Qatar, took part in two team-level games during the same time the African Nations’ Cup was on). An additional complaint: players who still haven’t received the money due to them for Tunisia’s World Cup qualification in September.
Translator magazine awaits the third instalment of the series…
The original source articles ‘Les coulisses du fiasco tunisien à la CAN, entre lobbying, insultes et ingérences’ and ‘Hussein Jenayah et Safwen Aidi, le duo qui a saboté la Fédération tunisienne de football’ by Matteo Trabelsi and Romain Molina were published in French in Inkyfada on 6 January and 13 January 2026, respectively.
They are available here and here.
Inkyfada is a Tunis-based media non-profit founded in 2014, specialising in investigative articles, data journalism, long-form reportage and contextualisation pieces.
