Malian Footballer Salif Keïta

He was also the first person to receive the African Footballer of the Year award in 1970. He was nicknamed the 'Black Panther'. Which inspired the club

Salif Keïta

Keita with Saint-Étienne in 1968
Personal information
Full name	Salif Keita Traoré
Date of birth	(1946-12-06)6 December 1946
Place of birth	Bamako, French Sudan
Date of death	2 September 2023(2023-09-02) (aged 76)
Place of death	Bamako, Mali
Height	1.76 m (5 ft 9+1⁄2 in)
Position(s)	Striker
Youth career
1960–1963	Stade Malien
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1963–1965	Real Bamako	21	(8)
1965–1966	Stade Malien	24	(12)
1966–1967	Real Bamako	26	(15)
1967–1972	Saint-Étienne	149	(125)
1972–1973	Marseille	18	(10)
1973–1976	Valencia	74	(23)
1976–1979	Sporting CP	63	(32)
1979–1980	New England Tea Men	39	(17)
Total		414	(242)
International career
1963–1972	Mali	28	(13)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Like others in Bamako he would grow up poor. So he decided that he would play football in order to escape poverty. During his youth his incredible talents led him to join Stade Malien and AS Real Bamako.

Salif Keïta Traoré was born in Bamako, playing in his country for AS Real Bamako and Stade Malien. With the former, which he represented in two different spells, he was always crowned Première Division champion. At the first CAF Champions League in 1965 Stade Malien would lose 2-1 and the year after that he would lose another final against Stade d'Abidjan.

In 1967, 20-year-old Keita left for France to join AS Saint-Étienne, where he won three consecutive Ligue 1 titles, including the double in 1968 and 1970. In his last two seasons with Les Verts combined, he scored an astonishing 71 league goals – 42 alone in the 1970–71 campaign – but the team failed to win any silverware; in 1970, he was voted African Footballer of the Year. He would also act in a film later on in his life about it.

Keita joined fellow league side Olympique de Marseille in the 1972 summer. After the club tried to force him to assume French nationality he opposed, leaving in the ensuing off-season for Valencia CF in Spain.

Spanish newspapers were accused of racism when one headline read El Valencia va a por alemanes y vuelve con un negro ("Valencia goes out to buy Germans and comes back with a black man"), but he was always loved during his spell at the club, netting in his debut with the Che, a 2–1 La Liga home win against Real Oviedo, and being eventually nicknamed La perla negra de Malí (The black pearl of Mali); he complained, however, that he was constantly played out of position.

In 1976, after three years with Valencia, Keita signed for Sporting Clube de Portugal, where he replaced another legendary goalscorer, Héctor Yazalde. In two of his three seasons with the Lisbon side he scored in double digits, winning one domestic cup. He retired at the age of 34, after a couple of years with the New England Tea Men in the United States.

In 1963, at the age of only 16, Keita was selected to play for Mali. He was part of the squad that appeared at the 1972 African Cup of Nations in Cameroon, helping the national team finish second.

In June 2005, Keita was elected president of the Malian Football Federation for a period of four years. Late into the following year, he was selected by the Confederation of African Football as one of the best 200 African football players of the last 50 years.

Keita's nephew, Seydou Keita, was also a footballer. He also played some years in France, and later represented, with great team and individual success, FC Barcelona. Mohamed Sissoko, who played namely for Valencia, Liverpool and Juventus FC, was also his nephew; both played similar roles as central midfielders; another nephew, Sidi Yaya Keita, was also a footballer and a midfielder, who played most of his career in France with RC Lens.

 

After his retirement he would return back to Mali and invest in businesses and would create his own training center creating talents like Mahamadou Diarra and Seydou Keita who was his nephew. He would also be the president of the Malian Football Federation. He also became ambassador for AS Saint-Étienne for life.

Guinean film director Cheik Doukouré used the life of Keita as a starting point for his 1994 work Le Ballon d'or. In 1994, he created the first training center for professional football players in Mali, which bore his name.

From 2007, Keita acted as delegated minister of the Prime Minister of Mali.

Salif Keïta died on 2 September 2023, at the age of 76.

Club