Pape Abou Cissé's forgotten half-season at Saint-Étienne

A career built in Piraeus

By the time he left Senegal's youth ranks and signed for Ajaccio as a trainee in 2015, Cissé was already on the path that would define him: 71 Ligue 2 appearances with the Corsican club before a pre-contract move to Olympiacos in 2017 made him a fixture in Greek football. He scored on his way into the side, was named to UEFA's Europa League Breakthrough Team in 2018, and became known for a towering, surprisingly mobile presence at centre-back, dangerous from set pieces as well as reliable in open play. Two Super League titles, a Greek Cup and a Europa League away win over Arsenal followed across his years at the club.

The loan that interrupted it

Amid that run, on 30 January 2021, Cissé was sent out on loan to Saint-Étienne, with an option to buy reportedly set around €13 million. The framing at the time was that this was a chance for him to find form again at a historic French club, suggesting his standing at Olympiacos had dipped rather than this being a straightforward step up. It was a brief arrangement, by August 2021 he was back in Olympiacos colours, scoring in a Europa League playoff win over Slovan Bratislava, with no permanent deal to Saint-Étienne ever completed. The loan had run roughly half a year before Olympiacos reclaimed him.

Why it's been lost to the story

What followed made the Saint-Étienne spell easy to forget. Back in Greece, Cissé scored twice against OFI and was the lone scorer against Aris as Olympiacos pushed for another championship, later winning Super League Player of the Month and a place in the Team of the Season for 2021–22. Then came the Africa Cup of Nations: thrust into Senegal's starting XI after Kalidou Koulibaly tested positive for coronavirus, Cissé's performances against Zimbabwe and Guinea drew fresh interest from European clubs, and he ended the tournament as a champion, later honoured by President Macky Sall as a Grand Officer of the National Order of the Lion.

Against that backdrop, continental trophies, individual awards, a state honour, a half-season loan that produced no permanent transfer and no retelling of what happened on the pitch in France has simply dropped out of the narrative. It sits there in his record all the same: a short, uncertain chapter sandwiched between two spells of Olympiacos silverware, before he later moved on to Turkey's Adana Demirspor in 2023.

The shape of a career

None of this undoes what Cissé built at Olympiacos or achieved with Senegal. But the Saint-Étienne loan is a reminder that even decorated careers carry these in-between spells, moves made to rediscover form, quietly closed out, and then overtaken by everything that came after.