Arouna Koné's forgotten last stop at VK Weerde

A career built on bigger stages

Arouna Koné made his name in the Netherlands with Roda JC and PSV, winning back-to-back Eredivisie titles with the latter. A big-money move to Sevilla followed in 2007, though injuries and loan spells at Hannover 96 and Levante disrupted that chapter before he found permanent form in Spain. His move to the Premier League in 2012 brought the moments people still talk about: an FA Cup winner's medal with Wigan Athletic in 2013, and a memorable 2015–16 season at Everton that included a hat-trick against Sunderland and a starring role in wins over Southampton and Chelsea.

After leaving Everton in 2017, Koné signed for Turkish side Sivasspor, where he was far from a passenger, 13 goals in his first season and 11 in his second made him the club's top scorer. That Turkish spell, while less discussed than his Premier League years, was substantial and productive. It is what came after that has slipped almost entirely from memory.

The spell nobody talks about

In July 2022, with his top-flight days long behind him, Koné signed for VK Weerde, a club playing in Belgium's ninth tier. For a player who had scored at Goodison Park and lifted the FA Cup at Wembley, this was about as far removed from the elite game as football gets, amateur level, a small club, no headlines beyond a brief announcement.

The spell lasted just six months. There is no record of him racking up appearances or goals in the way his statistics were tracked at every previous stop; by the time he arrived at Weerde, Koné was effectively playing out his final months in the game rather than building a new chapter. In January 2023, having spent half a season there, he retired from football altogether.

Why it mattered anyway

It would be easy to treat the Weerde spell as a footnote unworthy of mention, a curiosity for trivia nights rather than genuine football history. But it says something about Koné that he chose to keep playing at all, dropping from a Turkish Süper Lig top scorer to a ninth-tier Belgian dressing room rather than simply walking away after Sivasspor. It was there, quietly and without fanfare, that a career that began with a World Cup appearance for Ivory Coast in 2006 finally came to its close.

For a player whose peak moments, the World Cup debut against Argentina, the FA Cup final heroics, the Everton hat-trick, are well documented, this last spell is the opposite: barely recorded, barely remembered, but very much part of how his story actually ended.