September 2 – Former Ivory Coast international Souleymane ‘Sol’ Bamba has tragically died, aged just 39.
Bamba was coaching at Turkish club Adanaspor, which said he had died in the city of Manisa having been admitted to hospital with a fever ahead of his team’s away game.
“We just suffered a great tragedy. This was completely unexpected,” said club president Asil Bostanci.
“Before everything else, he was a person whose heart was full of football, who loved football, who was a very good person. We had other plans, we had other long-term projects coming up. This story should not have ended this way.”
Bamba, born in France, began his playing career at Paris Saint-Germain before playing in the Scottish, English, Turkish and Italian leagues. He also played 46 times for the Ivory Coast.
In his five seasons at Cardiff he was crucial in the Welsh club’s most recent Premier League campaign in 2018-19 and was also the club’s assistant manager for part of the 2022-23 season.
“I can’t believe I won’t see that beaming smile again,” Neil Warnock, Bamba’s manager at Cardiff in 2018-19, wrote on X. “I’m so happy that Sol was part of my life and we had such brilliant memories together.”
During his playing career, Bamba underwent treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer, before returning to the field in 2021 with Middlesbrough.
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