“A Very Crazy Month”
Koblenzer Keeper spontaneously becomes a folk hero
01/30/2022, 1:10 p.m
The RW Koblenz goalkeeper’s dream may be over, but Baboucarr Gaye remembers it. With the Gambian national team, he fails in the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations. But his exploits bring the keeper a lot of attention and recognition.
Baboucarr Gaye mourned only briefly after the end of his personal football fairy tale. “It’s the defeat that I can cope with best,” said Gambia’s goalkeeper after the 2-0 defeat by Cameroon in the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations with a broad grin: “To the many smiling and also crying faces in Gambia look, pride is the greatest.” Especially for him, who rose from fourth division player to national hero in record time.
In December, in the dreary everyday life of the Regionalliga Südwest, the opponents were still Sonnenhof Großaspach, FC Homburg or SV Elversberg, but the goalkeeper from RW Koblenz at the Africa Cup of Nations drove rows of attackers from European top leagues to despair. “Of course I was convinced of my quality,” said the 23-year-old on ZDF. But with the best will in the world, he never imagined that things would go “like in a dream”.
However, not much was missing and he should have booked his first big tournament as a nightmare. At the beginning of January, Gaye tested positive for Corona at the training camp, and he experienced the start of the tournament from isolation in Qatar. He only traveled to Cameroon for the third group game – and put the 2.2 million inhabitants of Gambia in a “small positive state of emergency” with spectacular parades.
The next opponent is called Offenbach
The fourth-division player kept a clean sheet both against Tunisia and against Guinea in the round of 16 and led the world rankings at 150. right away in his tournament premiere among the top eight teams. “I got a lot of messages, especially via social media. The country is celebrating in full euphoria,” reported Gaye: “It’s a very crazy month that I look back on.”
Against tournament favorite Cameroon, he again showed a world-class reflex (36′) when Vincent Aboubakar headed the ball, only Karl Toko Ekambi (50’/57′) from Olympique Lyon could overcome it twice. He tried to “make the best use of the platform,” Gaye said.
The official Africa Cup of Nations Twitter account was dedicated to the goalkeeper despite Gambia’s elimination. “How did he save that?” It said appreciatively next to the video, which shows the excellent defense of the header from close range: “Gambia’s Baboucarr Gaye grabs the ‘Parade of the Day’ award.”
The long-standing youth player from Arminia Bielefeld should have multiplied his market value of 75,000 euros within ten days. And yet it will now go back from the big football stage to the dreary everyday regional league life – on February 11th, the second half of the season will start at Kickers Offenbach. With RW Koblenz, Gaye is in 13th place, behind FC Astoria Walldorf and ahead of the second team of VfB Stuttgart. Then it’s up to the five-time national player to increase the gap to the maximum six relegation places.