Mahamadou Diarra was born in Bamako, Mali on 18 May 1981. The six foot, 168-pound midfielder began his football career in the CSK Bamako youth system and hit the big time in 1998 when called to play for the First Team. European football opened its doors to Diarra soon thereafter, and OFI Crete was the first European team to give him an audition at the start of 1998/99 season. He didn't disappoint and went on to sign his first professional contract. realmadrid-team
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Mahamadou Diarra. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahamadou_Diarra