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Personal
Fullname: Mohammed Sylla
aka: Momo Sylla
Born: 13 March 1977,
Birthplace: Bamoro, Bouaké, Cote d’Ivoire (but brought up in Paris, France)
Signed: 2 Aug 2001
Left: 1 June 2005
Position: Midfielder, winger
Debut: Celtic 3-0 St Johnstone, League, 28 July 2001
Internationals: Guinea
International Caps 22
International Goals 0
Biog ![[Untitled]](https://wikifoundryimages.s3.amazonaws.com/de5a4e5e420f807d624b3cedb987153f "[Untitled]")
“Hope kept me going, kept me working as hard as I could in training…Without hope, life is pointless.”
Momo Sylla (2002)
Momo Sylla was signed by Martin O’Neill from St. Johnstone for a reported fee of £650,000 in the summer of 2001.
A pacey player, the manager thought that he could add something different to the team and provide the First Team with a spark (well that’s our guess).
However, his performances on the pitch were rather mixed. He had a number of fine performances, and scored some good goals but he never wholly convinced. In a squad bursting with quality and confidence, it was never going to be easy to break-in.
He was a player in Celtic’s Run to Seville (the UEFA Cup final 2003), and he ably competed against some good sides (most notably against Liverpool) as well as scoring a cracking goal against Basle in the Champions League qualifiers in the same season.
It was remarked that on the training pitch that he was the most skillful player. Problem is that was never proven enough in the matches that counted.
He was inconsistent and never seemed to fit in as a player into the First Team, and his best games can be said to have been against lesser sides, the notable exception being a match v Liverpool in the UEFA cup. Meant that at the end that he wasn’t a regular pick for the first side, and came on as a sub more often than not.
He became in practise a squad back-up player, filling in on games when injuries occurred or players needed rest.
No surprise to many when he was moved on (to Leicester City in 2005) but he had actually made a bit of a cult name for himself amongst a minority of fans (for some reason). Maybe it was down to his name, the silly song made for him or just his style. Who knows?
If anyone thinks Celtic could have gotten more out of him, then it should be noted that his short spell with Celtic was actually one of his longest tenures with any of the numerous clubs he had spent time with. So as a player, he never seemed to suit any club for the long-run which is a shame as he did have talent.
Regardless, we hoped him all the best.
He spent around two seasons at Leicester, and then later moved onto to Kilmarnock where he appears to have wrapped up his senior career.
Playing Career
| Club | From | To | Fee | League | Scottish/FA Cup | League cup | Other | ||||
| Kilmarnock | 12/01/2007 | 31/05/2007 | Free | 10 (1) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 1 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Leicester | 01/06/2005 | 12/01/2007 | Free | 27 (7) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 2 (2) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Celtic | 02/08/2001 | 01/06/2005 | £ 650,000 | 26 (21) | 3 | 3 (2) | 2 | 3 (3) | 1 | 5 (16) | 1 |
| St Johnstone | 20/07/2000 | 02/08/2001 | Free | 35 (0) | 5 | 2 (0) | 0 | 2 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Le Mans | 01/08/1999 | 20/07/2000 | No appearance data available | ||||||||
| Ayr | 01/08/1997 | 28/09/1997 | Free | 0 (3) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Totals | £650,000 | 98 (32) | 8 | 5 (2) | 2 | 8 (5) | 1 | 5 (16) | 1 | ||
| goals / game | 0.06 | 0.28 | 0.07 | 0.04 | |||||||
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||||
Honours with Celtic
Scottish League
UEFA Cup
Pictures
From Not The View: ‘So Farewell Then…’
Momo was signed by Martin O’Neill from St. Johnstone for a reported fee of £650,000 in the summer of 2001. The question is, why?
Not that I’m questioning his ability, you understand. It’s just that after nearly four years at Celtic I’m still none the wiser as to what position he was supposed to be playing in or what kind of role was envisaged for him. I simply can’t believe that he arrived at Celtic Park satisfied that he was on a decent salary and content to sit on the bench for the duration without ever pushing for a first team place.
At St. Johnstone he appeared to have been given a free hand to inhabit whatever areas of the pitch took his fancy. At Celtic he never really looked comfortable in whatever position he was tried in. To pick out the highlights of his Celtic career isn’t difficult, because there aren’t very many; he scored a cracking goal against Basel and had a reasonably good game at Anfield in the UEFA Cup tie.
That apart, his shining moments came in midweek League Cup ties against Second Division outfits, or the early rounds of Europe.
Sylla departed for Leicester City in the summer of 2005 but failed to impress and was released on a free transfer after just two years at the Foxes.
Sylla listens without prejudice
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/sylla-listens-without-prejudice-2477766
THE Scottish Executive’s poster campaign to raise awareness of racism is clearly in evidence on the approach roads to Celtic Park. From a certain angle, indeed, the stadium seems perched atop one billboard emblazoned with the stark slogan: “No place for racism”. But Celtic midfielder Momo Sylla prefers to get on with the football rather than become embroiled in the politics of a problem which can blight society.
By The Newsroom
Sunday, 20th October 2002, 1:00 am
The obscenity of discrimination on the grounds of skin colour has been dominating the football agenda again: abuse meted out to Emile Heskey and Ashley Cole while playing for England in Bratislava last weekend not only ensured this, but prompted calls from Kick It Out, the group set up to challenge racism in the game, that there should be a Europe-wide boycott of football by black players if affirmative action is not taken to tackle the issue.
Sylla’s personal experiences in this country serve as proof that it is not only religious bigotry that makes for the wrong kind of headlines.
In December 2000, Motherwell player Steven Hammell was accused of racially abusing the midfielder, who was then with St Johnstone, after an off-the-ball altercation at McDiarmid Park. Charges relating to this incident were later dropped, but at the same venue 11 months later, the Perth constabulary had to intervene again on behalf of Sylla, who had moved to Celtic four months previously. This time they arrested two St Johnstone supporters alleged to have sworn and gestured at the player in a racially-inflammatory manner as he warmed up on the touchline.
The case reached court, but was eventually dropped, and Sylla’s reflections suggest a desire not to give racism the oxygen of publicity for fear of exacerbating the problem.
“The two supporters were drunk, and probably not aware of what they were saying,” he says. “I didn’t want the police doing anything because I think the men said these things to me as they resented the fact I’d left for Celtic, rather than because of my colour.
“I was born black, I am black and will die black, so things anyone might say to me about my colour, I pay no attention to. In every crowd there will be one or two nerds. I think it is important not to judge everyone by the actions of a few.”
It is instructive that when asked to what extent racism has been a concern for him in Scotland, 25-year-old Sylla turns the focus on himself. “My girlfriend is white, the husband of my sister is white, and I have plenty of school friends who are white, so it is not an issue. When I came into Celtic, my team-mates were fine with me, our fans were fine with me, and my social circle was fine with me.”
With a recent survey revealing that one in four Scots admits to being racist, Sylla is almost infuriatingly reasonable about a matter that strikes at the heart of civilisation. An extraordinarily laid-back fellow off the field, he proffers his opinions sporting a smile that exudes enough warmth to melt an iceberg. Doing so with baritone vocal delivery that calls to mind the icon Paul Robeson.
Unlike that black singer who was pivotal in American civil rights, Sylla has no desire to use his place in the entertainment industry to attempt to right wrongs.
“I am not interested in politics,” he declares. “As when I was living in Africa and France, there are things I see in Scotland that I like, and things that I don’t like. Above all, though, I am a sportsman.”
Throughout his life, Sylla might be said to have conformed to what would be expected of him for personal well-being. Raised as Mohammed Sylla – his religion is a “private” matter – in the Ivory Coast’s Bamoro-Bouake, he is the youngest of six, with three sisters and two brothers. From the age of 10, he was reared by the female children of his family in Paris: his mother and his father believed this move afforded him greater opportunities than were available in Africa.
“It was difficult without my parents, but I followed their wishes,” says Sylla, whose mother, Massiami Bamba, is on her first visit to Glasgow.
Athletics interested him more than football, but he was encouraged to stick at the game by teachers who spotted a natural talent. “They pushed me, and I’m grateful they did.”
After starting out at French Second Division club Creteil on the outskirts of Paris, Sylla moved to Le Havre as an 18-year-old. With three Eastern European players on the books, the UEFA ‘three foreigners’ rule that was then in operation led to his taking out French citizenship to enhance his career prospects. This was at the behest of the club that he left in 1997 for a three-month trial with Ayr United. Later came a move to Le Mans, and St Johnstone manager Sandy Clark plucked him in the summer of 2000 after Sylla had impressed in a friendly.
By then a Guinean internationalist through his father’s nationality, the invention and ball-playing abilities that had earned him such a step up brought widespread acclaim. In picking up 16 cautions in his Perth season, however, he revealed a tempestuous side at McDiarmid Park. His talent appeared to be an untamed one.
Even this, though, could perhaps be attributed to his desire to adapt to his surroundings. Which might explain why he has been a more controlled figure in his recent, and most concerted, run in the senior side at Celtic. All of 14 months after the player moved to the Glasgow club in August 2001 for a 650,000 fee.
“It is a long story why I played the way I did for St Johnstone, and one I do not want to go into,” Sylla reveals. “Celtic do not dwell on the aggressive side as much as St Johnstone did, and are more concerned about a player’s football capacity, though I can become heated. This is because I do not like to be taken for a fool.
“But I have gained wisdom and knowledge in recent years, and when Martin O’Neill came in for me after my 16 yellow cards, there was an element of trust from him. Therefore, I do not want to let him down. People made some wrong assumptions of my style because of the bookings at St Johnstone, and I want to prove them wrong.”
The opportunities to prove anything during his first season were severely limited because of the outstanding form of Didier Agathe in the right wing-back slot, the position O’Neill would appear to believe is also best suited to Sylla.
In the past few weeks, he has been preferred to Agathe in this role, and he will be hoping this continues today against Hearts, in the televised Premierleague match at Tynecastle, and also on Wednesday, when Celtic face up to their nemesis of 2000, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, in the CIS Cup. This might be considered reward for the fact that, while on the periphery last season, Sylla says he never surrendered the belief that his time would come.
“Hope kept me going, kept me working as hard as I could in training…Without hope, life is pointless.”
A significant hope would be for a world in which Sylla was not maligned because he is black.
From 2023:
A Celtic supporters club named after Momo Sylla.
