Who is Karim Konaté, the Ivorian nugget from Salzburg who declares his love for OL?

During an interview given to African Football News, the prolific Ivorian striker Karim Konaté, 19, declares his love for Olympique Lyonnais. The striker, under contract with Salzburg and who alternates with Liefering, its subsidiary of the Austrian second division, wears a jersey of Sinaly Diomandé, the Lyon defender. “OL is my flagship club. I also like Liverpool and Barça, but Lyon remains the first of the first, explains the native of Koumassi. Lyon is the heart, it does not move. The blood is Red and blue.”

Trained at the biggest club in Ivory Coast

By his own admission, Karim Konaté targets “speed, technique and depth” as his main assets. These qualities, he highlighted them with the club of his district, before joining the Mimosifcom Academy, a training center located in Sol Beni, in Abidjan, and which belongs to the ASEC Mimosas club, the most successful of the country with 28 championships since 1960.

During a tournament that his team lost in the final but in which he finished top scorer, Konaté convinced the leaders of ASEC to trust him. Between 2020 and 2022, he has a string of goals with the Abidjan club and is shooting at a ratio of almost one goal per game, which has earned him the target of many European clubs. “I chose Salzburg. It was the best choice given his past with African players, and in order to develop myself,” said the 19-year-old striker in the same interview. “They (the Salzburg leaders) came to Abidjan and then invited me to visit the facilities, I thought this was the club for me.”

Thundering debut with Salzburg

Karim Konaté therefore joins the Austrian champion until 2027 for 3.5 million euros and starts first with its subsidiary, FC Liefering, which plays in the Austrian second division. Until the World Cup, he scored 10 goals in 14 games, which earned him a call-up by Matthias Jaissle, coach of Red Bull Salzburg, for the league match against WSG Tirol on February 19.

Karim Konaté replaced Juior Adamu in the 74th minute and scored 11 minutes later in his first-ever first-team game, sealing Salzburg’s victory, which ultimately won 3-1. The young Ivorian thus confirms his finishing skills glimpsed in the Youth League, a competition in which he scored six goals in seven games, including a hat-trick against Chelsea and a goal against Real Madrid in the round of 16, but could not avoid elimination. of his against the Spaniards.

In the footsteps of Haaland… or Drogba?

Back with FC Liefering in March, he notably scored a hat-trick against SV Horn, second in D2, before being definitively upgraded with RB Salzburg. Since then, he has entered three new times with the Bullen.

If he is inspired by Cristiano Ronaldo despite his preference for Lionel Messi, Karim Konaté, despite his young age, has already tasted selection A. As if he were following in the footsteps of his idol Didier Drogba, that of all Ivorians . With the Elephants, he honors, under the aegis of Patrice Beaumelle, his first cape in September 2021 against Mozambique, at the age of 17, in a qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup. He has since been selected six other times, less than a year from the CAN that Côte d’Ivoire will play at home.

“It’s a great personal pride, to have launched a young player like that, confided the ex-coach of the Elephants on the set of Canal + Sport in March 2022. He is very intelligent, he wants to learn, he is always listening”, continued Beaumelle in his laudatory presentation of the young Konaté. If he is selected for CAN 2024, it will already be his second continental competition. He was indeed retained in the group to compete in CAN 2022 but did not come into play.