From the Editor
Famous French Football Magazine with the Caption ‘‘Our Pape Is Dead’’
Foroyaa Sport as well as all other media outlets across the World have learned with deep sorrow, the recall to God of Pape Diouf, the former first African President of Olympique de Marseille and players’ agent.
Diouf had Covid-19 disease and was put on ventilation in a health facility in Dakar.
According to news from his family and close relatives, Diouf had to be repatriated to France for more intensive care.
Pape whose real name is Mababa Diouf was born in Abéché, in Chad of Senegalese parents, with the mother coming from Saint Louis.
Diouf worked as a former journalist for ‘‘La Marseillaise’’ Newspaper in France in the 1980s, and became a successful agent from the 1990s, taking care of the interests of Joseph-Antoine Bell, Marcel Desailly, Basile Boli, William Gallas, Samir Nasri and Didier Drogba, among a series of very famous players. He arrived at the head of OM in 2004, before being officially appointed President of the French Football Club in 2005.
In recent times, Diouf fiercely opposed CAF’s notable re-arrangement of the Africa Cup of Nations football calendars, after convincing several foreign coaches including Claude Leroy, to coach the Senegalese national team.
Unfortunately his dream of seeing the Senegalese National Football team winning the Africa Cup of Nations has not been fulfilled during his lifetime.
In this painful circumstance and trying moments of the people of the World, this medium joins the world of football, his family and the whole nation of the sisterly Republic of Senegal, to sympathize with the pain of the death of one of Africa’s finest that has hit them. May his soul, rest in perfect peace. Amen!
