USM Annaba

Created on 19 June 1983 as one of four new university sports clubs set up across Algeria's main student cities, the Annaba side deliberately revived the initials USMA of the city's older Union Sportive Musulmane d'Annaba, which had been renamed Hamra Annaba in the arabisation of 1969. Placed directly into the second division for 1983-84, it finished second in its group and reached the top flight at the first attempt. Its white and red colours borrow the red of Hamra Annaba, and it is written USMAn to avoid confusion with USM Alger.