Guy Acolatse

Guy Kokou Acolatse, born on 28 April 1942, is a Togolese former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. He was the first black professional footballer to play in Germany. He made his debut for the Togo national team at seventeen after joining one of the two major clubs in Lome from Kpalime, and turned down offers from French and Belgian clubs. German coach Otto Westphal, who had coached Togo and later FC St. Pauli, persuaded him to join St. Pauli in August 1963. There he spent three years in the Regionalliga Nord, making 43 appearances and scoring six goals, then played three more years for HSV Barmbek-Uhlenhorst, and returned to St. Pauli in 1970 to play for the second team. In 1980 he moved to Saint-Denis near Paris, coached the third team of Paris Saint-Germain and worked at Ford, and in 2021 he featured in the documentary Schwarze Adler about black players in German professional football.