Frederic Kanouté - Striker - #679

Freddie Kanouté arrived at White Hart Lane in the summer of 2003 for what at the time was deemed a relatively modest fee of £3.5 million. The elegant striker, with what appeared at times a laissez-faire approach to football, came to Tottenham following the relegation of West Ham from the Premiership the previous season and made an immediate impact, scoring on his debut against Leeds United in a 2-1 victory. Things for the club took a turn for the worse when manager Glenn Hoddle was sacked after a poor run of results only six weeks into the season and although Kanouté retained his placed under caretaker manager David Pleat (who remained in charge for the rest of the season), he caused controversy in February 2004 when he decided to change his national allegiance from France to Mali in order to represent his parents birth nation in the African Nations Cup.

This left Tottenham with a dearth of strikers and on his return a month later, Kanouté found himself pushed down the pecking order behind his old West Ham team mate Jermaine Defoe, who had joined late on in the winter transfer window. As well as the arrival of Defoe, form and fitness eluded Freddie for the rest of the season and he failed to score another goal for the remainder of the campaign, despite which he still finished as Tottenham's second top scorer with 16 goals, seven of those coming in the league. The start of the 2004/05 saw the appointment of Jacques Santini as manager and while the similar attributes of Robbie Keane and Defoe meant they had to battle it out for a starting place, the tall and muscular Kanouté (deemed the perfect foil to his smaller striking partner) was all but assured of his first team spot. Santini lasted only two months in charge however and was soon replaced by first team coach Martin Jol, who like his predecessor also preferred the 'little and large' partnership up-front and Kanouté remained a regular, featuring in thirty two league games (22 10) and once again scoring seven league goals.

However, the arrival of Mido - a player in a similar mould to Freddie - in January 2005, had cast doubt over Kanouté’s long term future at the club and although he scored two goals in his penultimate game at White Hart Lane in a 5-1 drubbing of Aston Villa, he was sold in August 2005 to Spanish club Sevilla for £4.4 million.

In 2005, Kanouté arrived in Seville an outcast. Ousted at both his former clubs by Jermaine Defoe, whose gritty determination and battering-ram-like skills translated better to the English audiences than Kanouté’s lanky grace and inventiveness, the Malian left England as a disappointment. He briefly wowed West Ham, he somewhat surprised Spurs, but he didn’t do enough at either of those clubs to warrant the starring role in a project built around him.

Kanouté became a modern Sevilla legend. He scored 136 goals in 290 appearances over seven years for the Andalusian outfit, including 30 in 48 in an extremely successful 2006/07 season for both the player and the club. Sevilla won the Copa del Rey, the UEFA Cup, and the UEFA Super Cup that season and Kanoute scored in the final of each.

The incident with Mali. In 2004, FIFA altered its rules to allow players to represent the country of their origin instead of their birth. Kanouté, who had represented France in youth competitions but never the senior squad, received a call from Mali. The forward chose to accept the call to represent the country in the 2004 Africa Cup of Nations, infuriating Tottenham. Tottenham even challenged the ruling, but there was no stopping Kanouté, who led Mali to an unprecedented semi-final run in the tournament with a four-goal display.

Kanouté finished his career in 2013 playing for Chinese club Beijing Guoan.

Kanouté has also showed interest in a variety of humanitarian causes. In 2006, he launched an appeal to establish a "Children's Village" in Mali. This is now the well established Sakina Children's Village. Kanouté talks about his Foundation and the Village in the book, How to do good: Essays in Building a Better World, published in December 2016.

Career statistics

Games played: 597, Goals scored: 239

Spurs statistics

Games played: 73, Goals scored: 21