Omar Barrou
Omar "Keita Oumar" Barrou (born April 8, 1934 in Bamako ; † June 25, 2015 ) was a Malian - French football player .
Career
In his youth, Barrou played on the one hand for the Racing Club Bobo-Dioulasso in today's Burkina Faso and on the other hand for a club from the later Malian capital Bamako, which is also his birthplace; both countries were then occupied by the French. The player made the leap into professional football when he went to metropolitan France in 1956 and was signed to the first division club OGC Nice at the age of 22 . At Nice, the 185 centimeter tall striker was initially intended as a supplementary player. On September 9, 1956, he made his first division debut in a game against RC Lens , but was then only called up sporadically, also because at that time the opportunity to replace players was not yet given. In the course of the 1957/58 season he made the team-internal breakthrough and made a name for himself as a goalscorer with ten goals. Although he was less successful in the following season with six goals, he was part of the French championship team from 1959. Thanks to this success, Nice qualified for the European Cup and Barrou, who never played for either the French or the Malian national team, made his debut in international competition, even if the participation was not successful and it was his only experience international level remained. Also in the 1959/60 season he scored twelve times in the league and achieved his best goal yield in the first class.
The striker remained loyal to Nice for several years, placing himself in the lower mid-table with the southern French after the championship success. In 1963 he turned his back on both his club and the French first division and moved to the second division Le Havre AC . At Le Havre, however, he was not an undisputed regular player and although he played regularly, he did not score a single goal in 19 games. After a year he left the north of France and returned to the south of the country, where he found work at second division rivals AS Cannes . In Cannes he was better as a scorer than ever before and ever after, as he hit the goal 19 times and thus had a significant role in the team's rise to the top division.
Despite this success, Barrou did not go into the top division in 1965, but instead signed with the also second-rate AC Ajaccio . Even if he scored relatively often for the Corsican, he was largely ousted from the team during the 1966/67 season. In view of this, he turned his back on the club in 1967, despite the promotion to the top division, and found a new employer in his ex-club from Cannes, which had since been relegated again. For AS Cannes he was in the squad for the duration of the 1967/68 season, but hardly played a role and ended his career in 1968 at the age of 34 after 156 first division games with 47 goals and 83 second division games with 40 goals.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Omar Barrou - Fiche de stats du joueur de footall , pari-et-gagne.com
- ↑ Omar Barrou complete profile ( memento of October 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), soccerdatabase.eu
- ↑ Football: Omar Barrou , footballdatabase.eu
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Barrou, Omar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Barrou, Keita Oumar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Malian-French soccer player |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 8, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bamako , Mali |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 25, 2015 |