JS Saoura

The name they chose, Saoura, comes from the valley that runs through the province. JSB and ESD had merged back in 1968.

Promotion came fast. JS Saoura won its regional group in 2008–09, then the inter-regional group the year after, then the national group the year after that, climbing three divisions in three seasons to reach the top flight. Ligue 1 itself has been harder to crack outright — the club finished runner-up in 2015–16, again in 2017–18, and again in 2025–26, without turning any of those close finishes into a title. The same 2015–16 season also brought a run to the Algerian Cup final, lost there too. In the Sahara, that run of near-misses sits alongside a rarer distinction: in 2017 Abderrahmane Bourdim scored the club's first goal in the CAF Champions League, the kind of marker that matters more to a team from Béchar than to clubs used to continental football.