Kamara Calling
After an injury hit first season in England, Boubacar Kamara is fit and ready to show the Premier League just how good he is.
Last week was an emotional week for Aston Villa. On Monday news broke that the club had lost one of the heroes of its 1982 European Cup winning team with the sudden passing of former striker Gary Shaw. One of the beautiful things about football is that a club’s next match can offer fans solace in times of sadness and the following night Unai Emery’s men beat Young Boys 3-0 in Berne in Villa’s first top level European match in 42 years. A long week finally came to a close with two late goals in a frantic Midlands derby comeback win over Wolves. However, one other piece of good news also emerged last week which may well have a hugely important impact on the club’s fortunes this season.
The return of the forgotten man
Boubacar Kamara is now back in full training and is set for a return to action after suffering a knee ligament injury back in February. The former Marseille academy graduate is surely Villa’s forgotten man but with the departure of Douglas Luiz to Juventus in the summer, all eyes with be on him to hit the ground running on his return. The Frenchman certainly enjoyed a positive debut season in Birmingham after joining in the summer of 2022, quickly acclimatising to the fast-paced hurly burly of the Premier League and impressing with his composure on the ball and tough tackling tenacity.
After making his debut against Bournemouth, Kamara went on to make 25 appearances in an injury ravaged first season. The season’s injury curse first struck in September with a blow to his knee that saw him side-lined until November, costing him his place in France’s 2022 World Cup squad. Despite returning ahead of schedule for a 3-1 victory over Manchester United, another knee injury against the same opposition just four months later cruelly wiped out the remainder of the season.
The Villa faithful had enjoyed a brief, tantalising glimpse of Kamara’s quality and could be forgiven for forgetting all about him after the club broke its transfer record to bring in another midfielder in the shape of Amadou Onana. However, to really appreciate just what Villa fans can look forward to when Kamara takes his place in the starting line-up, it’s worth looking back at the 24-year-old’s time with his hometown club Olympique de Marseille.
A maestro in Marseille
After joining the club at the age of five, “Bouba” went on to make 170 appearances for Les Phocéens. He made his debut at the age of 16 in the Coupe de Ligue against Sochaux in the 2016-17 season – an inauspicious start perhaps given that Marseille eventually lost on penalties. However, that disappointing result was symptomatic of the turbulent malaise which the southern giants found itself rooted in during Kamara’s time at the club. Kamara went on to play under six managers in his six years at the club, with the closest he came to silverware being when he named as an unused substitute in the 3-0 loss to Atlético Madrid in the 2017-18 Europa League final.
Yet, Kamara’s ability to switch effortlessly across a range of positions, from centre back to left-back, right-back and defensive midfielder, quickly made him a firm favourite with OM’s notoriously abrasive supporters. As Stefan from The Marseille View podcast reflects, “Kamara was arguably the biggest academy product Marseille has had since Samir Nasri.”
Villa fans may be used to seeing Kamara in midfield, but it was as a centre back that he first established himself, alongside the experienced Luiz Gustavo and Adil Rami in the 2018-19 season. Kamara’s mobility and recovery speed quickly impressed but it was his composure on the ball that really caught the eye, and in May 2019 he received his first call-up to the French national team – an impressive feat in the youngster’s breakout season.
It was Andre Villas-Boas who recognised Kamara’s ability to coolly bring the ball out of defence and soon deployed him as a midfield screen beside Morgan Sanson and Valentin Rongier. The next two seasons saw Kamara establish himself as the side’s galvanising midfield fulcrum and in his final season he was even entrusted with the captaincy in the absence of Dimitri Payet and Steve Mandana. A darling of the Marseille faithful, the local boy had become the club’s star man.
Indeed, perhaps the only blot on his Marseille copybook was the nature of his departure. ”Fans were disappointed in his decision to leave the club on a free” recalls Stefan from The Marseille View, “given that he was an academy player, a local player who supposedly had affinity to the club and the city.”
However, with Emery’s Villa enjoying an overdue renaissance it looks like Kamara made a smart career choice. After being out for so long, his return will feel like a new signing and as his time at Stade Vélodrome should illustrate, Villa fans have plenty to look forward to from a player with the potential to be one of the best defensive midfielders in the Premier League.