I WANT TO BE BIGGER THAN MY IDOL YAYA
Kop new boy Keita’s reaching for stars
LIVERPOOL v MAN CITY
The 22-year-old RB Leipzig midfielder is set to join Liverpool at the end of the season in a £60million deal agreed by the clubs last summer.
And England-bound Keita has already set his sights on making his mark in the world’s most watched league.
“I want to become the best African player in the world,” said Keita.
“My idol from Africa is Yaya Toure. He is strong, works hard and has made it to the very top.”
Liverpool fans may still be mourning over the loss of £142m Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona.
But, in the footballmad town of Koleya in the port city of Conakry, Guinea, the message to the Kop is “stay calm, Naby Keita is coming”.
On the impoverished streets of Koleya, they believe Keita is going to be the biggest African star the Premier League has ever seen. Bigger even than his idol Toure (above, top), Didier Drogba (above), Kop team-mate-to-be Sadio Mane, George Weah, Nwankwo Kanu and Samuel Eto’o. Proud dad Sekou calls him the “fruit of Africa”, while locals in Koleya say “Keita is a gift from God”.
Keita is a torch-bearer for the people of Guinea and will never forget his roots.
“Becoming a Liverpool player will be very special and a very important step in my career, but I won’t let fame go to my head,” said Keita.
“My parents had nothing and sometimes life was very tough. I come from a poor family and from a country that’s also kind of poor.
“So, when I visit Conakry on vacation now, I buy sacks of rice and sugar and things like that for local people.
“And I also donate money to victims of floods and help my friends and family too because I’m proud of where I am from.”
Keita has done more than that, rising from the shantytown environment of Koleya with the kind of story which gives hope to thousands of football-crazy kids across Africa who dream of making it big.
While plenty of his new Anfield team-mates will have been pampered and cosseted at plush academies where an ample supply of new boots, training kits and hefty pay packets are the order of the day, Keita honed his skills on the street.
“When we were little, we played in the middle of the street and, even when cars passed by, we wouldn’t stop playing,” Keita told Kick-off in Germany. It just meant we had to play smarter to avoid the cars – and it helped you become better!” In a poverty-stricken town like Koleya dreams of hitting the big time usually remain just that. Even though Keita’s talent was special, his parents could not see a way forward as they had no money to fund the gamble of sending him to Europe.
Sekou said: “I had always watched him play from a little boy and then people started to approach me about him.
“I told him that, first, he should go to school and learn and not just concentrate on being a footballer
“I told him I didn’t have the financial means to send him to Europe to be a footballer, but maybe somebody else could help with that.”
Thankfully, Ali Bedara, a coach from Conakry, heard of Keita and started the ball rolling to get the 16-year-old to France.
Once there, he found himself at FC Istres – after failing trials at FC Lorient and Le Mans FC – and his journey to the Premier League was in full swing.
Red Bull Salzburg snapped him up and his career took off , leading to a move to the German Bundesliga with sister club RB Leipzig.
And from there – in a short while – to the Kop.