Aboubacar Keita, who graduated from Westerville North High School last year, has been selected to play soccer in the FIFA U-20 World Cup, the biennial international men’s youth football championship contested by the under-20 national teams of the member associations of FIFA, since its inception in 1977 as the FIFA World Youth Championship. The tournament is taking place in Poland between May 23 and June 15. The action airs live on FS1.
Keita plays as a defender for a USL League One club, the Richmond Kickers, and is on loan from Columbus Crew SC. He was born in New York City and raised in Guinea, but moved to Westerville at the age of 10, eventually attending Westerville North High School and playing for the Crew SC Academy.
On May 10, he was named to the final roster for the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup by head coach Tab Ramos. Keita was sitting in a car in Richmond, Virginia, when he got the news from Crew SC Technical Director Pat Onstad. The 19 year old was rehabbing from a hamstring injury and his focus was to get healthy. He described, “I just started yelling, like a little kid. He was still on the phone. I didn’t hang up. I was pretty excited.”