Kabylia sits at the northern tip of Africa, on the lip of the Mediterranean. It is home to some 7.5 million people, with notable expats including footballing glitterati such as Karim Benzema and Zinedine Zidane, part of a richly woven football heritage. Nominally, legally, these lands belong to Algeria.
But there is an "otherness" felt by the Kabylian Berbers about their place within Algeria. Ideologically, Kabylian people represent the possibility of a culturally pluralistic Algeria, an alternative to the more monolithic Arab-Islamic model of the country desired and pursued by the state government.
That feeling extends to football, says Lyes Imemmai, an Algerian national of Kabylian Berber heritage who is the head coach of a newly formed Kabylia national team.