TUNIS — Espérance de Tunis announced late on Thursday that the suspension imposed on Youcef Belaïli had been lifted and that the contract the Algerian international had already signed with the club was now active, making him eligible to play again. By Friday evening, MC Alger had issued a statement saying that Belaïli had signed a contract with the Algiers club as well, and that it would defend its rights "by every legal means available".

The suspension came from FIFA, which handed Belaïli a twelve-month ban in March in a dispute with his former club AC Ajaccio. According to Afrik-Foot, the case concerned falsified documents, and the sanction was due to run until March 2027. The player appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled in his favour and lifted the ban.

Two clubs, one signature

That decision unlocked a situation both clubs had been positioning for. Espérance had said in June that it had an agreement in principle to extend Belaïli's stay, conditional on the CAS ruling. When the extension looked unlikely, the club indicated the player's spell in Tunis was over, and MC Alger — Algeria's reigning champion — announced an agreement of its own.

The Algiers club's statement on Friday went further than the earlier reports. It said its previous announcements had not rested on talks or verbal undertakings but on a contract signed by the player, that it holds "an official document", and that it would act if "contradictory contractual commitments" were confirmed. It also called on its supporters to stay calm.

Neither club has published the contract it says it holds, and neither has stated the dates of signature — which is the fact that would settle the matter. Under FIFA's regulations, a player bound by two overlapping contracts, and the clubs involved, can face sanctions ranging from compensation to a registration ban, and the dispute would normally be heard by FIFA's Football Tribunal before any appeal to CAS.

What it means for Espérance's season

Belaïli, 34, is the club's number 10 and, when fit, its most decisive attacking player: fourteen matches, four goals and seven assists last season before a cruciate ligament injury sustained in the capital derby against Club Africain in November 2025 ended his campaign, followed by the disciplinary case.

Espérance open the 2026-2027 Ligue 1 season at home to Étoile du Sahel on Saturday 23 August at Radès. Whether Belaïli is registered in time — and whether a rival federation's complaint could freeze that registration — is not yet resolved.

The structural point

The episode is not simply a transfer saga. It shows how much of North African club football's business is settled after the fact by arbitration rather than in advance by contract discipline. Espérance built its summer planning around a ruling it could not predict; MC Alger built its own around an agreement whose legal standing it now has to prove; the player spent five months in limbo over a case originating in France.

Clubs and federations in the region have long been urged to publish registration and contract data through the transfer matching systems FIFA already operates — a transparency measure that would make overlapping signatures visible before they become disputes rather than after. Nothing in this case required a tribunal to discover. It required somebody to check a register.