A summer signing of FC Salzburg, Keita arrived at the Red Bull Arena as Austrian Bundesliga champion with a wonderful ambition, but what do we want to know about the “African deco”? bundesliga.com is a closer look …
Keita played a direct role in 19 goals for Salzburg in 2015/16. Click here to decide on your official Bundesliga team!
Keita was born in Conakry, guinea’s capital, in 1995, in a circle of low-income relatives. The football apparatus wasn’t the wisest thing on the grocery shopping list in the family circle, but that wasn’t the sensible thing for a young Keita to play. “I was looking forward to going to the supermarket with my mom,” she said. “There were a lot of circular things to play football with. Unfortunately, there were also things like lampshades that broke. My mom says buying food with me was very expensive!”
See: The making of Naby Keita:
Keita joined the club in his hometown, Horoya AC, at the age of nine, but in search of a race beyond his local country at 16, he made the 6,000-kilometre adventure to France, welcoming his foreign teammate Guy-Michel Landel, who registered at Le Mans UC 72. Failed attempts followed at FC Lorient and Le Mans, but Keita unperturbed, and when Guinean defender Bobo Balde hosted a skills exploration tournament in Marseille two years later, Keita quite inspired FC Istres’ Ligue 2 club, which signed him in November.
Born “Nathrough Laye Keita”, those with good eyes would possibly have seen that their intermediate call has been replaced through “Deco” on the player’s social media. As a two-time UEFA Champions League champion, Keita is small, measuring 1m72. His first passes and advances are to Brazilian-born Portuguese, and after looting 12 goals and seven assists for Salzburg last season, comparisons with former FC Porto and FC Barcelona are justified throughout the season.
These performances attracted admiring glances from all the football of European clubs, however, for Keita, there was only one fate in her brain when she decided to leave Salzburg. “[Leipzig sports director] Ralf [Rangnick] treated me like a son,” he said. “He arrived in France in 2014 to point to me in Salzburg and I accept as true with him completely.”
The sentiment, it seems, is mutual, with Rangnick pointing out at Keita’s arrival: “We are very pleased that Naby Keita has chosen, despite requests from European clubs, to take his next steps in Leipzig. It adapts perfectly to our young team, with its dynamism, its exceptional technical and tactical skills and its character.”
Perhaps as expected for those who have already added 4 team titles and two individual honors to their trophy closet just a few months before his 21st birthday, Keita has no shortage of confidence. “I need to be the most productive African footballer,” he proclaimed this year before. “My idol from Africa is [the captain of Ivory Coast] Yaya Touré. He’s strong, he runs hard and he’s reached the top.” Guinea’s early debut against Mali in 2014 and a run to the quarter-finals of the African Cup of Nations last year recommend that the current Austrian and Guinean player of the year be on track to achieve his goal.
When asked recently through redbulletin.com about his philosophy of life, Keita replied without delay, “Never where your roots are.” From the Bundesliga, Keita is full of respect. “It will be intense and faster, ” he said. “There’s more pressure, on and off the field. I am a team player who gives everything for the team and tries to respond to the tactical orders of the coach […] I sign up for RB as it is an exciting club with wonderful potential. I didn’t need to join a big club in the Champions League without delay. It’s still too soon.”
Despite her early successes, Keita remains anchored and close to her circle of relatives in her local Conakry. He describes his mother as the only thing he couldn’t live without, his best Saturday night after a game like a gastronomic night with Mrs. Keita, and said that if he hadn’t succeeded as a footballer, he would have “probably, like my father, arranges the bikes.”
In addition to breaking the lampshades and adopting the nickname “Deco”, Keita is pleased to laugh at himself. “I’d like to be informed English, ” he said. “But before that, I still want to be informed German!” Oachkatzlschwoaf “[Austrian slang for” squirrel “should be removed from the dictionary!”
Fourth arrival #RBL! Midfielder Naby #Keita moves to the Pleiayae [River in Leipzig] on a four-year contract!
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