Khenchela

In April 1971, USM Khenchela's Algerian Cup semi-final against USM Alger ended not on the scoreboard but in the stands, when crowd disturbances led federation officials to sanction both clubs. It remains the closest the team has come to a major final, and it happened decades before the club had any business competing at that level at all.

Khenchela had grown out of the city's Muslim sporting associations under French rule, taking shape on 28 July 1943, and it spent its first postwar seasons working through regional competition rather than the national one: second in the Critérium d'Honneur in 1962-63, first in the Division d'Honneur five years later. The promotion to Nationale I in 1974 lasted two seasons; a 14th-place finish in 1975-76 sent them back down, and the club did not see the top flight again for close to fifty years.

That wait ended in 2021-22, when Khenchela won Ligue 2 and returned to the Algerian top division under the ownership of Algérie Télécom. Sofiane Bayazid led the scoring that promotion season, and the following year the club settled into the division with an eighth-place finish, its best since the return. Matches against local rivals JS Khenchela are still built up as the "Khenchela Classic," a fixture with more riding on it locally than the league table alone would suggest.

Around the ground, known as Stade Amar Hammam and holding 8,000, the club answers to nicknames that outlast any single squad — Ciskaoua chief among them, alongside the older "Lions des Aurès." Djamel Benlamri, capped internationally, is the name Khenchela supporters point to when asked who the club has produced.