Arouna Koné

Arouna Koné is a striker who plays for Everton and the national team of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast).

This player was born into a poor family with 10 sons and 5 daughters in Anyama. He was unwilling to follow the advice of his father who wanted his son to concentrate his effort on education at school. Arouna was more into football and after his father’s death Arouna was taken by his mother to the football club of Rio Sport d’Anyama.

In 2002/03 he was noticed by Lierse S.K. is Belgium and soon signed a contract with this club. Then he joined Roda JC in the neighbouring Netherlands where he managed to play really well scoring over ten goals in each of the two seasons for the Dutch.

Soon he moved to PSV Eindhoven in the summer of 2005. That was a successful move as Arouna delivered a brilliant football collaborating with a Peruvian Jefferson Farfan. Arouna won the Dutch Eredivisie of 2005/06 and 2006/07, also reached the Dutch Cup final of 2006 and the semi-finals of the Champions League.

Regardless of the rumours linking him with Middlesbrough Arouna joined Sevilla on August 30, 2007. Unfortunately for the footballer his career at the Spanish club went wrong way from the very beginning. First there were rumours about heart problems of the Ivorian which he quickly denied. However his time at Sevilla was wrecked by traumas and it didn’t let him play more than in 40 league games for three and a half seasons with Koné advised to start to search for another club. In the winter of 2010 Arouna went on loan to Hannover 96 where he played 8 games with 2 goals for half a year. His return to Sevilla again wasn’t fortunate so he was loaned to Levante where the footballer truly found his place. Making 34 appearances with remarkable 17 goals he dragged Levante to their final 6th position on the league table of 2011/12. That made the management of the Valencians buy out the contract of the footballer setting high hopes for him in their UEFA League Cup campaign.

In 2012 Arouna joined a Premier League club Wigan Athletic. The Ivorian impressed the manager Roberto Martinez and once the head coach moved to Everton in 2013 he invited Kone to join him.

Koné also has a good experience of performing for his national team. He received his first call-up in 2004 and since then he has represented his country in 39 games scoring 9 goals.