French club RC Lens, owned and led by Armenian Joseph Oughourlian, won the Coupe de France on Friday for the first time in its 120-year history, beating OGC Nice 3-1 at the Stade de France and setting off unforgettable celebrations among one of the most devoted fanbases in French football, reports Zartonk Media.
Oughourlian, a French-Armenian businessman and the grandson of a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, acquired RC Lens in 2016 and took over as president in 2018, when the club was a debt-laden second-division side. He restored its finances and rebuilt it into one of the most respected football projects in France, returning Lens to the Champions League in 2023 after a 20-year absence and guiding the team to a second-place finish in Ligue 1 this season.
Lens controlled the final from the moment Florian Thauvin opened the scoring in the 25th minute, drilling a left-footed finish into the net. Odsonne Édouard, like Thauvin a French striker, doubled the lead in the 42nd minute. Nice pulled a goal back through Djibril Coulibaly in first-half stoppage time, but Senegalese striker Abdallah Sima restored the two-goal cushion in the 78th minute to seal the trophy.
Founded in 1906 in the mining region of northern France, Lens had chased this prize for more than a century. The Coupe de France is the oldest knockout competition in French football, and the club had reached three previous finals without ever winning. That wait is now over.
Beyond football, Oughourlian is the founder of the investment fund Amber Capital and the chairman of the Spanish media group PRISA and the newspaper El País, which places him among the most influential Armenians in European business and media.
His Armenian roots run directly to the genocide, and he has carried that heritage forward as one of the most senior figures in the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the world’s largest Armenian nonprofit organization. He was elected to its Central Board of Directors, served as a vice president of the organization, and today sits on its Council of Trustees alongside figures such as former Armenian president Armen Sarkissian. He has also remained an active investor and philanthropist in Armenia itself.
That commitment reaches the Armenian game directly. Sardarapat FC, recently promoted to the Armenian Premier League, has a partnership with RC Lens that gives the Armenian club access to the French side’s training methods and developmental standards. Oughourlian has supported Sardarapat since its founding.
