Salif Keita (footballer)
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Keita with Saint-Étienne in 1968
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| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Salif Keita Traoré | ||
| Date of birth | 8 December 1946 | ||
| Place of birth | Bamako, Mali | ||
| Height | 1.76 m (5 ft 9 1⁄2 in) | ||
| Playing position | 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) | |
| National team | |||
| 1963–1972 | Mali | 28 | (13) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Salif Keïta Traoré (born 8 December 1946), known as Keita, is a Malian retired footballer who played as a striker.
Keita 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 top division champion.
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 club failed to win any silverware; in 1970, he was voted African Footballer of the Year.
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.
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