Florian Sotoca: Lens’ unsung hero | OneFootball

Florian Sotoca’s route to get to the very top has been almost unique in modern football. Ligue1.com hails a player who, having turned 33, is tasting the UEFA Champions League for the first time and continues to be a standout performer week after week for RC Lens.

“It is true that my career took a while to get going, I have had a bit of an unusual journey,” Sotoca  said in a lengthy interview with Onze Mondiale magazine earlier this year. “If you had told me 10 years ago that I would end up second in Ligue 1 with Lens, I would have thought you were mad.”

Sotoca never appeared destined for a career at the highest level, but there he was last week, on the eve of his 33rd birthday, helping  Lens  come from behind to draw with PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League at a packed Stade Bollaert-Delelis. Just a month earlier he had made his debut in the competition as Franck Haise’s side drew away to Sevilla in Spain.

“Ten or 15 years ago we had stars in our eyes hearing the Champions League music on the TV. To experience it now, at our age, is quite exceptional,” Sotoca recently told sports daily L’Équipe in a joint interview alongside teammate Jonathan Gradit, another Lens player who broke through rather late at the highest level.

Summer Universiade gold medallist

Sotoca did not go to a youth academy as a young player, instead combining playing part-time lower-league football with his studies and working. He played for a club in his hometown of Narbonne, in France’s deep south, while studying in nearby Montpellier. Sotoca notably worked at a motorway toll and at his uncle’s shoe wholesalers.

“I had a proper youth. I did my studies. I went partying,” the forward told Onze Mondiale. “When you come out of a youth academy, you are fully prepared to become a professional. When you have come through the amateur ranks, it is more of a dream.”

For a long time, it seemed that Sotoca’s biggest achievement in the game might be winning the gold medal with France at the 2013 Summer Universiade in the Russian city of Kazan, when he scored in the final in a 3-2 win over Great Britain. A few years earlier, aged 20, he had a trial with Toulouse which he has said went well, only for a cruciate ligament injury to slow his career progress.

Failing to cut it at Montpellier

Sotoca had spells at Martigues and at Béziers before finally being given a chance to turn professional at the age of 24, when Montpellier Hérault SC came along in early 2015. He made his Ligue 1 debut for them in February 2016 as a substitute in a 3-0 win over LOSC Lille. But he would not play another top-team game there, and it looked as if he might have failed to take his chance as he tumbled back down the leagues to join Grenoble Foot 38 later that year.

Yet Sotoca helped them win back-to-back promotions so that in the 2018-19 season he was playing in Ligue 2. This time he was a regular and scored 12 goals, often wearing the captain’s armband for a team that did well to finish in the top half of the table. That summer Lens were looking to build a side that could compete for promotion back to the top flight, and Sotoca was a target for their sporting director Florent Ghisolfi. The boy from the south made the move to the far north for a considerable six-figure transfer fee.

Promotion-winning goal

Playing under Philippe Montanier, he scored on his Lens debut, as a 28-year-old, in a 2-1 win at Le Mans. The following March he netted a brace in a 2-0 victory at Paris FC and then a penalty to secure a 1-0 win at home to US Orléans. He didn’t know it at the time, but that goal ended up handing Les Sang et Or promotion. The result lifted Lens up to second in the table with 10 games left. The pandemic meant the season never restarted and so up they went back to Ligue 1.

By now, Sotoca had played at every level of French football, from the 8th tier to the first. “At Lens, the first year when we went up, during that pre-season I wondered if I was going to be good enough. I knew it would be difficult, and at Montpellier it hadn’t worked out,” he told Onze Mondiale. Yet he has handled the step-up brilliantly. Over the last three campaigns Sotoca chipped in with important goals and led the way on the pitch with his workrate.

‘Exemplary’

Playing in a supporting role off the outstanding Loïs Openda last season, Sotoca scored seven goals and set up 10 as Lens finished second in Ligue 1 to qualify for the Champions League. This season, as Lens adjust to losing Openda to RB Leipzig and Elye Wahi settles in, the lad from Narbonne with the unmistakeable southern twang remains as crucial as ever. There is no suggestion of age catching up with him yet, as his brace of penalties and assist for Facundo Medina in last week’s 4-0 thrashing of FC Nantes testified.

“Flo has the stats, he scores goals, he is involved in moves. That is important, but then there is all the other stuff that he brings in terms of balance, energy, creativity, and his exemplary character,” manager Haise said recently.

“Not everybody realises that, like the ordinary fan who thinks he is not a Ligue 1 player when he plays a bad pass. I know how important he is on every level. When everything is going well you can change any player. In the more difficult moments there are players who you know absolutely have to be in the starting line-up,” he added, and indeed Sotoca, the manager's trusted lieutenant, has started every game this season.

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