From Wydad Favourite to Wandering the Streets

Bobley Anderson is an Ivorian forward who became a favourite with supporters of Wydad Casablanca in Morocco during the 2012–13 season, after a promising start there. He later moved to Málaga in Spain, who loaned him to Zulte Waregem in Belgium. He returned to Spain and in 2015 joined Châteauroux in France.

Reports in Ivorian media in 2018 said that his situation had worsened over the previous three years, while he was in France. They described him wandering and begging, with mental disorders that had cut him off from reality. A shorter Moroccan report from October 2018, citing a friend, said he was reportedly homeless; it gave no explanation of how that had happened.

By 2024 he had returned to his hometown of Gagnoa, in Côte d'Ivoire, where, according to a recent television report quoted by Hespress, his situation had worsened further. The outlet said he was then 32 and had skin ulcers from life on the street. His sister told the press that he had lost his entire fortune, survived by begging and was in a disturbed mental state, no longer realising what he was saying.

His family tried several times to place him in care centres, but he repeatedly left. The article does not name the centres. His sister appealed to his former teammates in the Ivorian national team, to the Ivorian Football Federation and to officials in Gagnoa to step in. Wydad supporters, Hespress wrote, reacted with great sadness when they saw the images of him. The report does not say whether any help had been arranged by the time it was published in September 2024.