Chadrac Akolo Ababa (born 1 April 1995) is a Congolese professional

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 le ...

who plays as

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

for

Swiss Super League The Swiss Super League (known as the Credit Suisse Super League for sponsorship reasons) is a Swiss professional league in the top tier of the Swiss football league system and has been played in its current format since the 2003–04 season ...

club

St. Gallen , neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach , twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic) , website ...

and the DR Congo national team.

Early life and childhood

Born in the

DR Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

, Akolo left the country with his family due to the political upheaval there and journeyed across the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

, arriving in Switzerland at age 14. It was there he caught the eye of

FC Sion Football Club de Sion, commonly known as simply FC Sion or Sion, is a Swiss football team from the city of Sion. The club was founded in 1909, and play their home matches at the Stade Tourbillon. They have won the Swiss Super League twice, and ...

of the

Club career

On 1 February 2016,

Kinshasa Kinshasa (; ; ln, Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville ( nl, Leopoldstad), is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the Congo River, Kinshasa is now one o ...

-born Akolo joined

Neuchâtel Xamax , neighboring_municipalities= Auvernier, Boudry, Chabrey (VD), Colombier, Cressier, Cudrefin (VD), Delley-Portalban (FR), Enges, Fenin-Vilars-Saules, Hauterive, Saint-Blaise, Savagnier , twintowns = Aarau (Switzerland), Besançon (France ...

on loan until the end of the 2015–16 season. On 9 July 2017, Akolo signed a four-year deal with

VfB Stuttgart Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart (), is a German sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club's football team is currently part of Germany's first division, the Bundesliga. VfB Stu ...

. In July 2019, he moved to

Amiens SC Amiens Sporting Club (; commonly referred to as Amiens SC or simply Amiens) is a French association football club based in the northern city of Amiens in the Hauts-de-France region. The club was formed in 1901 and play in Ligue 2, the second d ...

. He joined

SC Paderborn Sport-Club Paderborn 07 e.V., commonly known as simply SC Paderborn 07 () or SC Paderborn, is a German association football club based in Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club has enjoyed its greatest successes since the turn of the mille ...

on loan until the end of the season in February 2021. On 3 July 2022, Akolo moved to

in Switzerland on a two-year contract.

International career

Akolo made his debut for the DR Congo national team in a 2–2

2018 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification process was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA confederations to decide 31 of the 32 teams which would play in the 2018 FIFA World Cup, with Russia qualifying automatically as hosts. All 210 ...

tie with

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

on 5 September 2017.

Career statistics

Club

International

:''Scores and results list DR Congo's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Akolo goal''.

Honours

Individual *

Swiss Cup The Swiss Cup (; ; ; ) is a football cup tournament that has been organised annually since 1925–26 by the Swiss Football Association. Since 1999 the winner earns the chance to qualify for the UEFA Europa League or the UEFA Europa Conference L ...

top scorer:

2022–23 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

(shared)https://www.football.ch/sfv/schweizer-cups/schweizer-cup/statistik-und-resultate.aspx/oid-1/s-2023/cp-4490/cr-0/tg-3823262/

References

External links

* 1995 births Living people Footballers from Kinshasa Men's association football midfielders Democratic Republic of the Congo men's footballers Democratic Republic of the Congo men's international footballers FC Sion players Neuchâtel Xamax FCS players VfB Stuttgart players Amiens SC players SC Paderborn 07 players FC St. Gallen players Swiss Super League players Swiss Challenge League players Bundesliga players Ligue 1 players Ligue 2 players 2. Bundesliga players 2019 Africa Cup of Nations players 21st-century Democratic Republic of the Congo people Democratic Republic of the Congo expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Switzerland Democratic Republic of the Congo expatriate sportspeople in Switzerland Expatriate men's footballers in Germany Democratic Republic of the Congo expatriate sportspeople in Germany Expatriate men's footballers in France Democratic Republic of the Congo expatriate sportspeople in France {{DRCongo-footy-bio-stub