Author in Valenciennes of his ninth and tenth goals of the season in all competitions, Chadrac Akolo is currently living his best period since his arrival at Amiens SC in June 2019. However, the Congolese international is not an indisputable holder but rather a luxury understudy behind the Tolu-Badji duo. An additional paradox about this player who is undoubtedly as intriguing as he is misunderstood. Decryption.
A transfer never digested?
As a symbol, the common history between Amiens SC and Chadrac Akolo began with a real imbroglio around his transfer in the summer of 2019. At first, the Picard club announced a dry transfer and the signing of a four-year contract (June 2023), before backpedaling and communicate about a one-year loan with option to buy and including a three-year contract. In fact, Chadrac Akolo was indeed on loan but with conditions making his transfer automatic at the end of the first season. As proof, even relegation to Ligue 2 did not invalidate the agreement with the German club Stuttgart, to which Chadrac Akolo still belonged. In reality, it was enough for him to play a handful of matches to belong definitively to Amiens.
All at a price that still arouses many fantasies today, estimated between four and five million euros in total, including the amount of the loan for the first season. What is certain is that it represents the second biggest investment of Amiens SC behind Serhou Guirassy (6 million euros) and ahead of Saman Ghoddos (4 million euros). However, Chadrac Akolo never really fulfilled the hopes placed in him by the CSA recruitment unit. Holder only six times during the shortened season in Ligue 1, the selection partner of Gaël Kakuta only started two more matches the following season in Ligue 2. All for a starving record of 4 goals scored in 30 games.
A decisive intermittent
Recruited to play a winger role in the 4-3-3 acclaimed by Luka Elsner at the start of the 2019/2020 season, Chadrac Akolo finally found his place, almost three years later, in a role much more axial in the 3-5-2 of Philippe Hinschberger, who regularly praised ” his skill in the zone of truth« . « After his double at Niort, I compared him to Youri Djorkaeff because he is a difficult player to place on a pitch, judge Oswald Tanchothis former coach who had been the first to refocus him at the start of 2021. From the outside, there is often a misunderstanding about his use, because he is not a real playmaker, not a real attacker, not a real eccentric. “He’s an intermittent, cyclical player, who can appear, disappear, but he doesn’t make many mistakes when he has a ball in the box.«
And in the absence of being able to question the main interested party, who did not wish to speak after his double in Valenciennes, Oswald Tanchot agreed to go further in the development of the composite portrait of the native of Kinshasa. « We probably expected things that maybe they couldn’t give and we didn’t use him on what he is able to do. He was presented as an eccentric speed, percussion, a real winger, but it’s not that Chadrac, continues the former HAC coach. It is above all a free electron. You have to accept that he does not necessarily defend like a dog, that he does not go back and forth for 70 minutes in his lane. He is a player to whom you have to agree to leave a certain form of freedom. Whether or not he goes to one side, everything must be done so that he ends up finishing his actions on the axis because he does notThere is no doubt that he is a player of formidable efficiency in the last sixteen meters or around the penalty area. »
His first goal at Valenciennes, there is the whole panoply of the attacker.
With 6 goals out of 26 shots attempted in the league, including 5 from inside the area out of 18 attempts, Chadrac Akolo has in any case the best conversion rate (23%) of his team among players with at least ten shots attempted . Enough to position him in the top 10 of the most effective players in Ligue 2 with at least five goals scored behind Rafael Leao (30%), Morgan Guilavogui (29.73%), Moussa Koné (29.63%), Nuno Da Costa (27.27%), Alexandre Mendy (26.32%), Gaëtan Charbonnier (23.73%) and Aldo Kalulu (23.53%) and to equalize with Branco Van Den Boomen and Niclas Eliasson. By way of comparison, Aliou Badji converted 21.15% of his attempts and Tolu Arokodare 11.67%. ” In addition, these goals are often very nice goalsconstate Oswald Tanchot. His first in Valenciennes, there is the whole panoply of the attacker between control, the small hook to eliminate the opponent and the finish with this very nice shot. He often has the right gesture for the situation and when he is confident, which seems to be the case at the moment, he can turn games around. »
An introverted character…
However, confidence is often what can be lacking in Chadrac Akolo, a character often described as as introverted as endearing by those who have been able to rub shoulders with him for almost three years in the Amiens locker room. ” When he gives, he does it totally but he also needs a lot of confidence to express himself, confirms the predecessor of Philippe Hinschberger. He is always very nice, very smiling every day, very sociable in the locker room, he is one of those players for whom we appreciate getting up in the morning when we are a coach. Now, he doesn’t give his confidence easily, he’s a very suspicious person, who must have been disappointed in the past and who is still in control. » A mistrust that undoubtedly finds its source in his personal journey.
Forced into exile at the age of 15 to escape poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chadrac Akolo initially lived in a home for asylum seekers when he arrived in Switzerland, all with the constant fear of being returned to Africa. “When my parents were talking about leaving for Europe, I dreamed even harder. I was impatiently awaiting the departure because this trip opened the doors to the football eldorado for me, confided Akolo to the Swiss newspaper Le Nouvelliste when he played with the Swiss club FC Sion. But the trip was terrible. The lump in my stomach stayed with me until I joined Mom in the airport hall. The pressure of fear of being turned away is terrible. The fear of leaving rarely leaves you, it weighs. They take people and send them back. Mom sometimes said, “Maybe our turn will come. » ».
…but very endearing
Chadrac Akolo’s turn will come but on the football level with the signing of a first contract with FC Sion in 2012, at the age of 17. “This contract was my passport to Europe. I was now sure to stay there. It was awesome.“. Still having refugee status, he then continued his apprenticeship with the FC Sion youth teams, the U18s and the U21s, before experiencing his first matches in the first team between 2013 and 2016. All this until a loan to the club of Neufchâtel Xamax allowing him to pass a real milestone with nine goals and three assists in sixteen games. All before the explosion season with FC Sion in 2016/2017 with fifteen goals on the clock and five assists alongside a certain Moussa Konaté. “All this history and his personality make him a very endearing boy”, glisse Oswald Tanchot.
And sometimes even too nice in a locker room where competition reigns between players who are both teammates but also direct competitors. ” He has to keep being a good teammate, but he also has to be meaner in a good way. He must be more starved, he sometimes lacks determinationconcedes the one who succeeded Luka Elsner during last season. Finally, he is a player who needs a certain context to express himself. It’s difficult in today’s football, but he almost needs to be at a club where he doesn’t worry about whether he’s going to play the next game. It’s a very difficult status to win, he may not have had that opportunity yet in Amiens. Otherwise, I think he is a boy capable of scoring 15 goals in a season in Ligue 2 without any problem. »
In the meantime, Chadrac Akolo certainly remains one of the great encounters made by Oswald Tanchot in his coaching career: “ He is someone sincere in his human relations, which is not the case for everyone in football, it is even quite rare. I really hooked up with him. I had given myself the personal challenge of relaunching him last year, to allow him to have a big second half of the season. I thought the game in Niort was the start of a second half of the season. The sequel is decidedly different (note: departure at the end of the winter transfer window). I’m happy for him to see that he’s there and that he’s still scoring goals. Today, I think he feels good in Amiens, that he has taken the measure of the context. »
To the point of giving in the coming weeks a completely different twist to its common history with Amiens SC? The future will tell. In the meantime, Chadrac Akolo shakes the nets before being perhaps at a crossroads next summer, at the dawn of his last year of contract with the Picard club.
Romain PECHON
