Chelsea cult hero Salomon Kalou reveals bizarre post-retirement passion project

Kalou won the Champions League with Chelsea but has now embarked on an unlikely career outside of football

Salomon Kalou has embarked on a bizarre post-retirement passion project (Getty Images)

Chelsea cult hero Salomon Kalou has revealed his surprising post-retirement passion project as he launched his new chocolate business.

The Ivorian, who won the Champions League and Premier League with the Blues during his six-year stay at Stamford Bridge, has opted against the punditry route since hanging up his boots in 2024, instead pursuing a career in sweet treats.

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The brand is called Oume, named after his birthplace, with Kalou keen to emphasise the importance of his homeland in the chocolate world. The Ivory Coast produces 45 per cent of the world’s cocoa, chocolate’s key ingredient.

“My uncle had a cocoa farm and I grew up around the farm and between school and at the weekend we would be helping him,” he told The Telegraph, speaking on how his passion for chocolate started.

“Growing up, I don’t remember eating chocolate and didn’t know what it was. It’s expensive. It’s more of a privilege, for people who can afford to buy it because it is expensive.

“People don’t know what they make in their farms is for chocolate. But we have a big percentage of the production. We also have great footballers.

“To make a comparison between the two, a product can come out of Ivory Coast and go global. A footballer can be born in Oumé and come to Chelsea and win the Champions League, can be global.”

Kalou is keen to promote Oume as a luxury brand, branching his cocoa out into other products.

Salomon Kalou won the Champions League with Chelsea in 2012 (Getty Images)

The brand’s website emphasises the importance of nostalgia in its inspiration, capturing “the sentiments of the time and place we call home”.

“It conceptualises Salomon’s fondest memories growing up with his parents and eleven siblings on a farm, which - among many other things - produced cacao,” the website reads.

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“Later as Salomon’s career took him across Europe and Latin America, the name Oume came to mean nostalgia. A yearning for the scents, sights, people and belonging of another place and time.

“With the childhood memories of Salomon Kalou and creativity of Karina Ferreira, Oume was founded to speak to the comfort of home.”

Kalou also won four FA Cups and a League Cup in 254 appearances at Chelsea, while spending time at the likes of Lille, Hertha Berlin and Feyenoord. For his country, he won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2015.