Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 10:32 am• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 10:46

Salomon Kalou is open to a new club, but is not focused on football at the moment. The clubless attacker has made a career switch: he is setting up his own chicken production in the Ivory Coast, with the aim of taking a large part of the chicken market in order to feed the population. At the moment, a large part of the chicken is flown in frozen from abroad. In conversation with Football International tells Kalou about his new work.

“I have a huge farm where 600,000 chickens are born a week. We sell our eggs and chicks to other small farms in the Ivory Coast,” says the former Feyenoord star player. “We are trying to expand the chicken production because the demand in Ivory Coast is greater than the supply. With my company I want to fill that demand, so that we do not have to import the chicken from abroad. That also makes the prices cheaper for the population and eventually we want to become the number one in the Ivory Coast market.”

Kalou also says that he is still in contact with Dirk Kuyt, his former attack partner at Feyenoord. The dreaded duo K2 caused a furore in the Eredivisie. “In my last year at Hertha BSC (2019/20, ed.), Dirk tried to get me back to Feyenoord. It was the season before the corona outbreak. Dirk was working with the technical director of Feyenoord at that time. It was all bad last minuteso it ultimately didn’t work. There wasn’t enough time to make it really happen.”

Kalou signed with Botafogo in the summer of 2020, but left in April and has been on a free transfer ever since. His retirement is not yet final, says 36-year-old Ivorian. He continues to follow football sideways, including the performances of Feyenoord. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the TV channels to watch Feyenoord’s matches live. I follow them on Instagram and always see the results and goals there,” says Kalou. Kalou is curious about Sunday’s Classic. “They have the qualities for it. If they can beat PSV, then they can also beat Ajax.”