Kei Kamara may just have been joking on Twitter when he said he was taking the Columbus Crew SC No. 9 jersey from Justin Meram, but that number is exactly what he represents to the team heading into the 2015 season.
Columbus fans spent most of 2014 calling for reinforcements up top, and the Sierra Leone striker said he’s feeling the weight of those expectations, though he has plenty of respect for incumbents Aaron Schoenfeld and Adam Bedell.
“It’s a lot of pressure, to be honest,” Kamara told media members on a conference call from Florida on Wednesday. “But at the same time, I’m talking to Adam and Schoenfeld, and they know I’m not getting here to take anyone’s position or anything. I’m here to work as hard as anybody else and to work with the other strikers and play my part when my number is called. I’m a veteran, I’ve been around the league, and that’s definitely an advantage [over] them. But at the same time, I want to work as hard as they’re working to get on that field.”
But in his second spell with MLS, an older and wiser Kamara says he won’t be buckling under that pressure.
“Maybe in my earlier career I would have put a lot of pressure on myself and think, ‘I have to score. I have to score. I have to score,’” he said. “Now I know it’s just linking up with the guys around me. If I’m not scoring, I’m helping someone else score… it’s not about one striker scoring goals. If we link up together, everyone is going to be on the score sheet.”
Kamara largely played on the wing when he was in MLS last with Sporting Kansas City, and he was never viewed as “the guy” while with Norwich City or Middlesbrough during his time in England. But Crew SC boss Gregg Berhalter has made it clear that Kamara will be the target man for the club this year.
Kamara thinks he’s up to the task.
“You don’t just stick as one center striker; if I make a run wide and the wide guy makes a run inside and he gets to stay in there,” he said. “For me, the fact that I’ve played on the left, right and middle in those positions helps me a lot in knowing my surroundings and what’s around me. But I’m going to love being the target guy, the center guy holding up the ball and being in the box more for crosses. It’s going to be great.”
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Kamara also sees similarities between the Crew SC head coach and his former Sporting boss Peter Vermes, though he joked with a laugh that “Gregg doesn’t yell at me."
“Vermes definitely had his game plan set up, and we stuck to it,” Kamara said. “We ended up having one of the [most] successful years over in Kansas City. I came in [to Columbus] last year at the end of the year, and I saw how the team plays. It shows that the coach here has his own game plan … and things have been going really well in the past few days, and you can really see what the vision is.”
The similarities don’t stop with the coach, and Kamara compared the recent Crew SC rebrand to what Sporting Kansas City recently experienced, coming from the angle of having played for the Crew in his first two seasons in MLS in 2006 and 2007.
“It’s changed for the better of the organization, which is great,” he said. “Coming back now, the rebranding and the coaching staff, things they’ve implemented, it’s a great vision. I was with Kansas City, and I saw some of that. So when I see some of that happening over here, it gets me excited.”
But what really gets him excited is the idea of playing with his teammates after being ineligible for MLS matches last year when he joined the club in October.
“I can’t wait to say, ‘I’m playing in my first Crew game,’” he said.
