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 ...

who played as a striker.

Biography

Soukane was born in 1936 in El Biar, Algiers, Algeria. Nicknamed Soukane II, he started his playing career in the junior ranks of JS El Biar. At the age of 20, he joined French club

Le Havre AC Le Havre Athletic Club (; commonly referred to as Le Havre) is a French association football club based in Le Havre, Normandy. The club was founded as an athletics and rugby club in 1872, making Le Havre AC the oldest professional French fo ...

, 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 (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...

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 with 21 goals, the first

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n to do so. In 1964, he joined Toulouse FC after discussions with long-time FLN teammate

Kader Firoud Abdelkader Firoud (October 11, 1919 in Oran, Algeria – April 3, 2005 in Nîmes, France), most commonly known as Kader Firoud, was a French-Algerian professional football midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in associati ...

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

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(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, formerly known as the Coupe Charles Simon, is the premier knockout cup competition in French football organized by the French Football Federation (FFF). It was first held in 1917 and is open to all amateur and profession ...

, where they lost 2–1 to RC Strasbourg. 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 Toulouse FC, 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 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 ar, فريق جبهة التحرير الوطني لكرة القدم, in french: Équipe du FLN de football), also known as ''Le onze de l'indépendance'' ( en, The eleven of the Independence) was a team made ...

Honours

* Top scorer of Ligue 2 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 Association football forwards Algerian footballers Algerian expatriate footballers FLN football team players JS El Biar players Le Havre AC players Toulouse FC players Red Star F.C. players Ligue 1 players Ligue 2 players Expatriate footballers in France Algerian expatriate sportspeople in France 21st-century Algerian people Algeria international footballers {{Algeria-footy-forward-stub