Abderrahmane Soukane (13 September 1936 – 5 July 2015) was an Algerian

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who played as a striker.

Biography

Soukane was born in 1936 in

El Biar El Biar (from Arabic "الأبيار", meaning "The Wells") is a suburb of Algiers, Algeria. It is located in the daïra#Algeria, administrative constituency of Bouzaréah in the Algiers Province. As of the 1998 census, it has a population of 52, ...

Algiers Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many Communes of Algeria, communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008Census 14 April 2008: Offi ...

, Algeria. Nicknamed Soukane II, he started his playing career in the junior ranks of

JS El Biar Jeunesse Sportive d'El Biar (), known as JS El Biar or JSEB for short, is an Algerian football club based in the El Biar district of Algiers, Alger, Algeria. The club was founded in 1944, and its colours are blue, red, and white. Their home stad ...

. At the age of 20, he joined French club

Le Havre AC Le Havre Athletic Club () is a French professional association football club based in Le Havre, Normandy. The football club was founded in 1894 as a section of the sports club of the same name, founded in 1884. Le Havre plays in Ligue 1, the ...

, playing with the club for 8 seasons. He helped the team reach the top flight of French football in 1959, winning the Division 2 Championship. However, after three seasons,

Le Havre Le Havre is a major port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy (administrative region), Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the Seine, river Seine on the English Channel, Channe ...

was relegated again to the second division. Soukane stayed with the club until 1964, when the professional section of the club was disbanded. In his final season with

, he would finish as the top scorer in

Ligue 2 Ligue 2 (, League 2), also known as Ligue 2 BKT due to sponsorship reasons, is a French professional football league. The league serves as the second division of French football and is one of two divisions making up the Ligue de Football Prof ...

with 21 goals, the first

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n to do so. In 1964, he joined

Toulouse FC Toulouse Football Club () is a French professional association football, football club based in Toulouse. The club was founded in 1970 and currently plays in Ligue 1, the first division of Football in France, French football. Toulouse plays it ...

after discussions with long-time FLN teammate Kader Firoud who was announced as coach of the team. In his first season, Toulouse finished a modest 11th in the 18-team top division. In his second season, they finished 4th in the standings, earning a ticket to the

UEFA Cup The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

(known as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup Finals then). He would also lead the team to the semi-finals of the

Coupe de France The Coupe de France (), also known in English language, English as the French Cup or less commonly as the France Cup, is the premier Single-elimination tournament, knockout cup competition in French football organised by the French Football Fed ...

, where they lost 2–1 to

RC Strasbourg Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace, commonly known as RC Strasbourg (, ; RCS) or simply just Racing, is a French professional association football club founded in 1906 and based in the city of Strasbourg, Alsace. It became a professional club in ...

. Soukane scored Toulouse's only goal in that game, and was also used as goalkeeper after the expulsion of the Toulouse keeper Devis. Soukane played two more seasons with

, and at the end of the 1967 season left the club after the disbandment of the professional section. He played one season with

Red Star 93 Red Star Football Club (), known as Red Star FC or simply Red Star, is a French professional football club founded in Paris in 1897, and is the fourth oldest French football club, after Standard AC of Paris, Le Havre AC and Girondins de Borde ...

before retiring from football. He died at the age of 78 on 5 July 2015, in El Biar, Algiers.

International career

Soukane, along with his older brother Mohamed, were members of the Algerian

FLN football team The FLN football team (in , in ), also known as ''Le onze de l'indépendance'' (), was a team made up mainly of professional players in France, who then joined the Algerian independence movement of the National Liberation Front (FLN), and assist ...

Honours

* Top scorer of

in 1964 with 21 goals

References

* Col., Les Cahiers de l'Équipe, 1956–1957. * Marc Barreaud, Dictionnaire des footballeurs étrangers du championnat professionnel français (1932–1997), l'Harmattan, 1997. cf. notice du joueur page 81.

External links

* 1936 births 2015 deaths People from El Biar Footballers from Algiers Men's association football forwards Algerian men's footballers Algerian expatriate men's footballers FLN men's international footballers JS El Biar players Le Havre AC players Toulouse FC players Red Star FC players Ligue 1 players Ligue 2 players Expatriate men's footballers in France Algerian expatriate sportspeople in France 21st-century Algerian people Algeria men's international footballers {{Algeria-footy-forward-stub