Black History Month Players: Freddie Kanouté

 As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link, but this post and today's thread on X is on Freddie Kanouté. 

Born in 1977, Kanoute grew up in the suburbs of Lyon, where he was scouted at 15 by local club Lyon. Due to his speed & technical ability, he was often used as a winger or centre-midfielder during his time in Lyon’s academy. But was also used as a striker when necessary. Making his debut for Lyon at 19 in the now-defunct Intertoto Cup in 1997, Kanouté would be part of the team won the tournament that year. He would be used as a rotation player by Lyon for the next 3 years, making 58 appearances & scoring 12 goals over the next 3 years. 

During his early career, Kanouté was called up to play for France’s U-21 side, but found himself behind more highly regarded forwards such as Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet & Louis Saha. He would only play 6 games for the side & then never played for France beyond that. With a golden generation of strikers ahead of him, Kanouté decided to focus on his club career instead. But chances were limited at Lyon. In 2000, he would take an opportunity to join West Ham on loan. Playing up front with Paolo Di Canio during the initial loan, Kanouté made a promising start to his life in East London & impressed then-manager Harry Redknapp enough to make his loan permanent.

In 3 years with West Ham, Kanouté would score 33 goals in 92 games. This was not too bad, considering Kanouté believed he was still honing his craft as a striker during his time with the club. He is remembered by West Ham fans as someone with immense talent, but also inconsistent. As West Ham were relegated in 2003, Kanouté’s time at the club was over and in August of that year, he would join the club’s fierce rivals Tottenham Hotspur in a £3.5 million pound deal, endearing himself immediately to the Spurs fans, scoring the winner on his home debut in a 2-1 win over Leeds with a spectacular overhead kick. Kanouté would stay with Spurs for 2 years, making 73 appearances & scoring 21 goals. He was never able to be a regular starter, especially after former West Ham teammate Jermain Defoe joined him at the club and then dislodged him from the team. 

During his time with Spurs, Kanouté would reignite his international career with Mali, the country of his father’s birth. Despite having played for the France U21s, a rule change by FIFA, which allowed players to represent a different country at senior level, made this possible. In the 2004 African Cup of Nations, Kanouté would start his international career brightly, scoring 4 goals in 4 games as Mali made it all the way to the semi-finals before being knocked out by Morocco. Kanouté would go on to play 38 games for Mali, scoring 23 goals.

In 2005, Kanouté joined Spanish side Sevilla. It was a match made in heaven as Kanouté would score double figures in all but one season at the club, scoring 136 goals in 290 appearances. In his first season with the club, he would win the UEFA Cup, scoring the final goal in the final in a dominant 4-0 win over English side Middlesbrough. The following season, at the height of Kanouté’s powers in the 2006/07 season, he would score 30 goals in 48 games in all competitions that season as Sevilla would go on to win the UEFA Cup (now known as the Europa League) for a second consecutive time and narrowly missed out on the La Liga title having led the table for most of the season. Kanoute credits his time at West Ham for helping him reach this potential as a striker, stating in an interview with the Guardian: "West Ham was the beginning of me being a centre-forward. I didn’t have much training as a No. 9, so there was a lot I had to unlearn and relearn". On a separate and wholesome side note, in 2007, Kanouté, a devout Muslim, saved a mosque in Betis, purchasing the premises on which it would be built for over $700,000 and would also raise over a million dollars in a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to build it. Kanoute would leave Sevilla in 2012 as a legend of the club on and off the pitch. He would move to the fledging Chinese super league for 18 months before retiring in late 2013 at the age of 36.

Since retiring, Kanouté has been busy in & outside the world of football. 

Outside, his eponymous charity, the Kanouté Foundation, has been active since the mid-2000s, with its greatest success, the Sakina Children’s village in Mali, an immense personal achievement for Kanoute. Inside the world of football, Kanouté is a registered agent, with his 12 management company representing the likes of Patson Daka & Moussa Djenepo. Kanoute stated in a BBC interview that he never intended to be a football agent, but did so to protect young African footballers. In a 2021 interview, Kanoute stated he realised that some agents were coming & scouting African players to take them to Europe, but then after that, they were not accompanying and looking after them in the right way. Kanouté’s agency does the opposite of that. In fact, Kanouté even looks after some of these players exclusively, making sure the transition to European football is done smoothly and the players are well cared for. This fits into his personal philosophy that players are ‘citizens and human beings before sports people’

Kanouté also realises that his position & influence can be used as a tool of good. He states that: “If we’re intelligent, we understand that privilege is also responsibility. Use it well and we can do good for people without those opportunities.” And if we could all be a little more like Freddie Kanouté, the world would sure be a better place for it.

Thanks for reading today's post. Today's sources came from two interviews with the BBC and the Guardian Newspaper and are listed below: 

BBC Interview- https://www.bbc.com/sport/africa/56721452.amp

Guardian Interview- https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/20/frederic-kanoute-football-sevilla-la-liga