The seasons pass and the 32-year-old striker remains one of the strong men of the collective, but also the symbol of this uninhibited Lens team.
He is the first name that comes to mind when you ask yourself who best embodies RC Lens on the pitch. Florian Sotoca has been an immovable part of the Sang et Or since his arrival in 2019, when the club was still playing in Ligue 2. Against PSV Eindhoven, Tuesday October 24, he will play the third Champions League match of his career. It’s not yet official, but there’s no doubt if we believe the words of his coach Franck Haise at a press conference after the victory against Strasbourg a month ago. For him, Florian Sotoca is part “players for whom you know it is essential that they are in the starting XI.”
On the eve of celebrating his 33rd birthday, the striker is Bollaert’s favorite. However, he is far from being a prolific scorer since he has only scored 32 goals in 156 matches with Racing, in all competitions, or approximately one goal every five matches. For example, he has never scored more than eight goals in a single Ligue 1 season and has only scored one this season. “There is everything he brings in terms of exemplarity, balance, energy, creation, imbalance, impact on offensive and defensive set-pieces. And not everyone measures that. not”insisted Franck Haise at the end of September, when his team was barely getting its head above water after a failed start to the season.
Taste for effort and identification
Florian Sotoca is an attacker with an atypical, almost unique, compensatory profile, with great game intelligence. Like Thomas Müller at Bayern Munich, his effectiveness lies in his ability to interpret spaces and in his riot of energy . “There are certain stats where he reaches a very high level such as high intensity races. He is capable of repeating the efforts during a match and a season. Having a striker who does so many kilometers, obviously, it takes everyone”, analyzes Olivier Guégan, who had him under his command in Grenoble between 2016 and 2018, from National 2 to Ligue 2, when Sotoca truly launched his professional career.
The coach told La Voix du Nord in 2019 that he was the first name he put in his team compositions. “In state of mind, attitude and posture, he is certainly one of the best players I have managed, adds the former coach of Sochaux and Valenciennes. It’s a reliable relay for a coach, and a unifying element.” Florian Sotoca is unanimous among all the coaches he has encountered, even in Montpellier where he only played two matches in a year and a half before not being extended. Philippe Hinschberger, the coach of his last season in Grenoble, even got excited for Eurosport: “He’s a lamb, the ideal son-in-law, well-mannered, polite, smiling, close to his friends. If you ask me for a fault, I don’t think I would be able to give you one. He’s the perfect teammate .”
“He’s a boy who comes from a rugby region. He has the codes”, explains Olivier Guégan. Florian Sotoca was born and raised in Narbonne, the city whose colors he wore on the football fields until 2013, at almost 23 years old. Due to severe injuries, including a ruptured cruciate ligament in 2010, his career took a long time to take off. It was only at the age of 29 that he participated in his first real Ligue 1 season (he was entitled to one minute of play with Montpellier in 2016). “I have known all the divisions, DHR, DH, CFA2, CFA, National, Ligue 2, Ligue 1, I have done them all”the person concerned had fun in the columns of Onze Mondial last February.
His trajectory is atypical, but his difficulty in breaking through both taught him pugnacity and brought him closer to ordinary mortals. “I worked in active life (in his uncle’s shoe store). I know it’s not easy every day.”told us the Narbonnais in July 2020, at the dawn of his debut with Lens in Ligue 1. “People fully identify with his profile and personality. He’s in the right place at the right time.”, says Olivier Guégan. The story of the perfect integration of a southerner with a lilting accent in the land of the Corons.