The Turkish club Istanbul Basaksehir have evidently gotten a bit excited by their snaring of the former Chelsea Striker Demba Ba and have unveiled his signature with a truly unusual video on social media.
It was preempted by a picture of a mystery figure, standing wearing the club’s orange kit and an owl mask over his face.
The video itself starts with a still of ‘The Godfather’ logo, and is spliced up with clips from a music video and a TV show. Having watched it a dozen times, we’re still not quite sure what they were going for.
Ba comes to the Turkish capital on a loan deal from Chinese Super League club Shanghai Shenhua, who he’s scored five goals in seventeen showings for across two separate stints.
Fine form and a slew of goals for Hoffenheim in Germany earned the Senegalese international a move to the Premier League and West Ham back in 2011, and he went on to play for Newcastle and Chelsea on these shores.
The well-travelled forward perhaps always be best remembered by Premier League audiences as the man whose goal derailed Liverpool’s title charge back in 2014 by pouncing on Steven Gerrard’s mistake and scoring in front of the Kop to put Chelsea a goal to the good.
Off the pitch and Ba has a share of the new North American football club franchise San Diego 1904 FC, which he part-owns with former teammates Eden Hazard, Yohan Cabaye and Moussa Sow. The club is due to begin playing in 2019.
