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Fullname: Amido Baldé
Born: 16 May 1991
Birthplace: Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
Signed: 13 June 2013
Left: 2 Sep 2014 (on loan); 28 Jun 2015 (free)
Position: Forward, Inside-Forward
Debut: Celtic 2-0 Cliftonville, Champions League, 23 Jul 2013
Squad No.: 17
Internationals: Portugal U19/21s / Guinea-Bisseau (senior)
International Caps: 4 (Guinea-Bisseau)
International Goals: 1 (Guinea-Bisseau)
Biog
Baldé arrived at Celtic with not too many overwhelmed by his signing. After a general spate of failed forward signings and loans in recent years that was not a surprise, but Baldé’s record prior to Celtic was not exactly a great one either.
He was a big strong strapping player whom it was expected that he could help bully defences and create chances for his fellow players as well as burst the net with some of his own goals.
In pre-season he was written off after some woeful performances, and the management even had to recycle the old ‘developing one for the future‘ clichés. He was kept on the bench in early competition matches even though the team was crying out for a striker after the transfer loss of Hooper. An excellent performance against Liverpool in a 1-0 win (friendly match) revised general opinions and he was now off the mark for the support and given the much needed slack he required, but still he was benched.
His tenure was to be quite short, and not much to say of note. His biggest achievement on the field was probably scoring the winner in a 2-1 away match v Partick Thistle, which without Rangers or Sevco, meant he had scored the winner in the then top Glasgow derby. Beyond that he did little to write home about, with just two more goals in all competitions.
Sympathisers believe he was given too few opportunities with twenty appearances being from coming off the bench. In fairness to the manager, that’s still a lot of game time and he never convinced. It wasn’t as if he was being kept out due to quality as Celtic were struggling to find a good striker.
The whole ‘one for the future‘ turned out to be a smokescreen for admittance that a big error had been made to buy Balde. He simply wasn’t good enough. The closest equivalent was Fortuné, who was not only physically similar but was also no less an unsuccessful transfer buy at Celtic.
Amido played his last game at Celtic in January 2014, and having been kept well away from the first team thereafter, it was obvious that the coaching staff had little confidence in him too. He often became ignored when discussing the first team squad by the general support as further illustration of how much he’d been written off.
Celtic needed some decent strikers and with a glut of underperforming frontmen (e.g. Balde, Stokes etc), the fat had to be cut and Amido Balde was loaned out to Belgian side Beveren and then Hapoel Tel Aviv. Sadly, those loan moves seemed to have failed miserably with only 1 goal in 21 games over two seasons.
Celtic mutually terminated his contract in June 2015. It was all for the best.
We wished him well.
His career never fully recovered, but he was to be much travelled with further spells in France, Angola, Portugal, Albania, Libya, Indonesia and Vietnam. So he has one of the most exotic playing CV’s of any former Celtic players in the club’s history!
[….]
Playing Career
| APPEARANCES | LEAGUE | SCOTTISH CUP | LEAGUE CUP | EUROPE | TOTAL |
| 2013-14 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 24 |
| Goals | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
Honours with Celtic
Scottish League