RAAL La Louvière

An Italian businessman named Salvatore Curaba bought a number. Matricule 94 is a registration entry with the Belgian football association, and in 2017 he took it off Racing Charleroi-Couillet-Fleurus. What arrived in the town was a licence and a place in the pyramid.

That number carries its own past. It was issued to Cercle Sportif Couillet, founded in 1919, and the club behind it changed identity repeatedly through the decades — RACS Couillet, then FC Charleroi, then RCCF — before Curaba's purchase ended the sequence.

La Louvière had reason to want a team. RAA Louviéroise, the town's old club, won the Belgian Cup in 2003 and went under in 2009; the two clubs share a town and a set of initials but nothing legally binding.

RAAL took the Belgian Third Amateur Division at the first attempt in 2017–18, and by 2023–24 had won National Division 1. A second-place finish in the Challenger Pro League followed in 2024–25.

Home is the Easi Arena, still called the Stade du Pairay by plenty of people who go there, with room for 8,050.

Curaba remains the figure the club is explained through. He made his money in software, and the matricule he bought is the reason RAAL exists at all — a purchase that gave a town its way back into the league, and gave a 1919 registration a fourth name to answer to.