Algeria and Austria will face off in Kansas City on Saturday during the last day of group stage matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The Austrian men's national team has been a sore subject for many Algerian fans who remember the 1982 men's World Cup match in Spain that has long been known as the “Disgrace of Gijón.”
After Algeria had already played its final group stage game against Chile, West Germany and Austria played against each other. After West Germany took an early 1-0 lead, it was clear to both teams that if they just ran out the clock, their current goal differentials would allow them to both advance to the knockout rounds.
Then, both teams appeared to intentionally make no attempt to score for the rest of the match. The team that ultimately missed out on the knockout rounds as a result of the "Disgrace of Gijón" was Algeria. To this day, many fans are still upset.
"There was a Spanish newspaper that put the match results in their crime section for what they had done," Daniel Sperry, who reported on this story for The Kansas City Star, told KCUR.
"For us, we look back at it and we say, 'Wow, that's kind of crazy, quirky history.' But, for the Algerians, it was incredibly heartbreaking, and they felt like it was a pretty deep injustice to them."
Sperry spoke with Algerian soccer fans who have immigrated to the Kansas City area to hear how the "Disgrace of Gijón" impacted them. Johnson County resident Rabah Mohammed Seghir told Sperry that it completely pushed him away from soccer for years.
"He no longer wanted to deal with soccer, I think. It took him, he said, almost five to 10 years to like really care about soccer again, even though Algeria did make the next World Cup in 1986," Sperry recounts. "And so, there was a little bit of pain for for the country."
Due to the way the 2026 tournament is currently shaking out, some fans have expressed a worry that a "Disgrace of Kansas City" could occur. A draw would likely advance both Austria and Algeria to the knockout rounds.
But Sperry just can't see an international tie happening.
"I don't know if it's as simple," he says. "Everyone might look at that and say, well, that's really simple, they both should just draw, and Algeria has all the incentive to draw to avoid (playing) Spain. But, I think there's a generation of their fans that will not be happy with their team if they do that."
- Daniel Sperry, reporter
