Balde was born in Marseille in 1975 and started his career at Olympic Marseille, finding his way into Celtic via Toulouse and two loan spells at Cannes and Mulhouse. Bobo made his debut for Celtic in 2001 after protracted negotiations.
He was an instant hit with the Celtic support, with the fans creating the "Bobo's gonna get you" chant to strike fear into the opposition strikers, and that he did throughout his career, in which he formed a formidable partnership with Big Johan as Celtic saw off Rangers easily to win their second title under Martin O Neill.
It was in Europe that Bobo showed his real worth, especially in the Home matches against Juve, Porto and Rosenberg in which all games were won by a single goal margin and memories of Bobo winning every header in the last ten minutes against Porto are still fresh in many minds.
In his next season, Bobo was part of the squad that took us on that amazing adventure to Seville, with the big Guinean defender getting sent off for a second bookable offence. With the game tied at 2-2 at this stage of the match and Celtic in the ascendancy it was a costly mistake but not one that ultimately contributed to our fate that night. One of the most enduring images of the many great views of that wonderous night was seeing Big Bobo sitting in the tunnel with his head in his hands sobbing.
It was at this stage that Bobo started to attract interest from some of the biggest teams in Europe, with Bayern Munich leading the list of Balde suitors. This lead Martin O Neill to make one of the craziest decisions ever made in football by tying the player to the club on a lucrative five-year deal, a decision that has subsequently cost the club millions. Further to that Bobo will today also claim a cool million pounds loyalty bonus.
Quite what happened to Bobo Baldes Celtic career and what inspired him to see out his playing career in the reserves is something that will continue to be shrouded in mystery. Whether the stories about the player asking what credentials Danny McGrain had to be able to coach him were true or not or whether the player took exception to Gordon Strachan we will never know, but there is one story that it would be remiss of me to not mention.
Whilst in a meeting with Peter Lawwell over his Celtic future in which the CEO was attempting to get Bobo off the wage bill the affable defender responded to a comment from Lawwell by saying "you are the Chief Executive of Celtic Football Club, I am the Chief Executive of Bobo Balde and I must do things in my interests" or words to that effect.
So there we have it then, Celtics longest 'serving' player is now off to pastures new and regardless of which stories you believe about the last few seasons of his career Bobo should leave with our best wishes. Despite the fact that he took a lot of cash out of our club he is a generous soul who has contributed a lot of his wages to help good causes in his native Guinea, including buying hundreds of Celtic strips and sending them out for the local children and contributing massively to school building projects in his homeland.
All the best for the future Bobo, there are plenty of fans out there that appreciate what you brought to Celtic. One of my best memories of him is charging the length of the pitch in Seville after being up the pitch for a corner to perform a perfectly timed last ditch challenge on Nuno Crapucho as he broke away.
Yours in Celtic
Clydebuilt