Kanouté, Fred

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Fred Kanouté

1977—

Professional soccer player

The French-African soccer player Frédéric "Fred" Kanouté spent several seasons with the English Premier League before signing with a team in its Spanish counterpart La Liga. The imposing six-foot, four-inch center forward and striker joined Seville's multinational roster whose players hail from Brazil, Denmark, Italy, and Côte d'Ivoire, as well as Spain, and who are inarguably the biggest celebrities in the two-thousand-year-old city. Ian Hawkey of the Sunday Times wrote that Kanouté and his Seville teammates "play attractive football, fast and fluent, with their powerful, elegant centre-forward the reference point, like the Giralda tower to the city itself."

Kanouté was born on September 2, 1977, in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, a suburb of Lyon. His family had come to France from Mali, and as a child Kanouté traveled regularly to the West African nation to visit relatives. He was fortunate to hold dual citizenship, which would later prove an unexpected boost to his soccer career. His skills on the soccer field were apparent in his teens, and by 1997 he had been signed as an apprentice with Lyon's professional team, Olympique Lyonnais. He spent two seasons with the team but was rarely put in the game, which made him eager to move on. During this period he was courted by both the French and Malian under-21 national teams, but he chose to play with France in the 1998 international season, which included a World Cup tournament.

Kanouté moved to England in early 2000 when he was loaned to West Ham United Football Club (FC) of East London. Given the opportunity, he proved himself an able striker in the last two months of the season. The club signed him to a full contract, and over the next three seasons he scored another twenty-seven goals for the Hammers, as the team is affectionately known. In August of 2003 he moved on to Tottenham Hotspur, another of the Premier League's curiously named professional soccer teams, this one centered in the north London borough of Haringey. His tenure there was more controversial, beginning with his unrelated decision to take advantage of a new rule enacted by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (International Federation of Association Football), which governs international play. The changed rule allowed players who had dual nationality at age eighteen to switch national allegiance if they had not yet played on a regular national team. This applied to Kanouté, who had only played with France's under-21 team.

Malian soccer fans were overjoyed that their national team, the Super Eagles, would now have a much-needed striker. However, executives with the Spurs were irate and vented their frustration in the press, and even tried to prevent him from playing in the African Nations Cup. As Kanouté explained to James Copnall of the Observer, "I am not just French, I am also Malian." Copnall noted that this was "a sentiment perhaps more readily understood in France than Britain. France, with its close links to former colonies and its racist far right scoring heavily in the polls, has more of the conditions in which a close bond with a country of origin flourishes."

Kanouté's troubles with Tottenham continued into the next season, especially after he made a handball gaffe during a League Cup quarterfinal against Liverpool that gave the opponents a much-needed penalty shot. The Spurs coach Martin Jol was so irate that he criticized Kanouté publicly and said the handball was "unforgivable," but as Kanouté told Michael Walker of the Guardian, the coach "came to me the day after and said: ‘OK, I've said it and they've written something bigger than I said. Of course I forgive you.’" Kanouté, who had not yet read the papers, said this act was characteristic of Jol's management style, which he commended. "[If] I found out from a paper or TV, I might go to him and say ‘Why you say this?’ Maybe we would have had a big argument for nothing. So it was good."

After rumors that Barcelona FC, the Spanish powerhouse, was interested in buying out Kanouté's Spurs contract, a surprise announcement came in August of 2005, when Sevilla FC acquired him. They won the prestigious UEFA Cup in the spring of 2006, beating out the best of Europe's professional teams. In the UEFA final, Kanouté scored one of the four goals that gave Sevilla a shutout over Middlesborough FC. He also continued to play with the Eagles, and in 2007 was named African Footballer of the Year.

Kanouté converted to Islam when he was twenty years old while still living in Lyon, and he was uneasy with one of Seville's sponsors, an Internet gambling site, and having to wear its logo on his jersey. Gambling is expressly prohibited in Islam, so he initially covered up the logo with tape. However, then the company, team management, and Kanouté reached an agreement that his jersey would remain the same and that the Internet site would make a donation to an Islamic charity each season. "In football it is easy to think you are the centre of the world," he said to Walker. "My religion helps me keep my feet on the ground. Being a Muslim is a way to feel about life—and football…. It gives me a lot of balance in my life."

In 2007 Kanouté became the owner of a mosque in Seville that had gone on the market; the Muslims who worshipped there could not afford to purchase it, and Kanouté stepped in at the last minute to save it from closure. He spent a reported $700,000—about a year's salary—for the mosque, which he planned to keep open to the largely African immigrant population who worshipped there. His generosity also extended to Mali, where he was planning to establish a children's village to provide basic health and schooling to the country's youngest and neediest. Though he had lived in France and England for all of his thirty-odd years, moving to Seville oddly made him feel much closer to Mali, he noted to Hawkey. Many Africans in Spain are recent immigrants, unlike those who live elsewhere in Europe and, like him, were even born in Europe. Cities in Spain are home to Africans who only recently risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean in little more than rafts and rowboats. "I have been touched by the situation of black people here, selling things at the traffic lights, without jobs," he told Hawkey. "It also means I look back at London in a different way, as the most tolerant place I've ever lived."

At a Glance …

Born Frédéric Oumar Kanouté on September 2, 1977, in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, France; son of a philosophy teacher. Religion: Islam.

Career: Olympique Lyonnais, Lyon, France, apprentice player, 1997-98; soccer player, member of France's under-21 national team, 1998, West Ham United Football Club (FC), London, England, 2000-03, Tottenham Hotspur FC, 2003-05, Super Eagles, national team of Mali, 2004—, and Sevilla FC, Seville, Spain, 2005—.

Awards: African Footballer of the Year, Confederation of African Football, 2007.

Addresses: Office—c/o Sevilla Football Club, Calle Sevilla Fútbol Club, s/n 41005, Seville, Spain.