London is Blue Dispatch #016

Who is this guy?

A few days ago, I was scanning footage of standout performances from players outside Europe’s top ten leagues when I chanced upon Auxerre’s Ousmane Camara, a 21-year-old from Guinea, playing in his team’s season opener against Valenciennes in France’s second division. In the 18^th minute, he burst past the opposition rightback, took two quick touches and dispatched a neat finish into the bottom corner with the outside of his left. In the 61^st, he sprinted 40+ yards on a counter, confidently taking a touch and slotting it with his left in the bottom corner. He then ended up assisting Auxerre’s third in a 4-1 win. That was all the evidence I needed to urge me to dig deeper. This is what I found.

At 15, Ousmane, the youngest of six siblings, leaves his family and native Guinea behind to make it as a professional footballer. The journey takes him to Mali, then to Niger, where a man forces him in the dead hours of the night to Libya. Here, he ends up being imprisoned for three months.

In his cell, Ousmane is beaten every morning – 40, 50 blows minimum, he tells France Bleu. The guards force prisoners to call their families, demanding extortionate ransoms approaching €5000. Some of the inmates are murdered in front of his eyes. The nightmare continues until a fight between guards and inmates allows him to escape; Ousmane ends up walking for several days through a forest before reaching a refugee camp located on the Mediterranean shore, where he keeps off starvation by participating in football tournaments between refugees.

From there, he undertakes an 18-hour voyage by an illegal boat to Italy. The boat runs out of gasoline and at one point, Ousmane falls overboard, nearly drowning before being helped back on. From Italy, he makes numerous attempts to head for France, finally succeeding by hiding in the toilet of a train heading to Nimes. In France, he stays in a hostel, plays for a club in the National 3 (the 5^th division of French football) before being picked up by Auxerre.

Why We Persevere

To purveyors of the beautiful game (scouts and fans especially) critique comes easy. Even the smallest flaws are used prop up the veracity of our assessments, a failsafe in case what we advocate for goes sideways. As a professional writer first and a hobby-scout second, some opinions I offer are mutually exclusive. I am a sucker for stories of triumph over hardships; so much so that they sometimes overshadow my attempts to be neutral about their struggles on the field. So many base their assessments purely on the present; others draw from their past to predict how they’ll do in the future.

When Romelu Lukaku gave the ill-fated interview that would derail his Chelsea career, the pushback he received was cataclysmic. I got some for suggesting that there was still a way back this season, not just because he fit tactically and how well Poch sandpapers away rough edges, but also because as a kid, Rom had seen his mother dilute a carton of milk with water because they were broke. It didn’t work out for us (football seldom does for a lot of people) but it is perhaps that entrenched resolve that has seen him score nine in his last eight for Roma and Belgium after a tough year.

Angel Di Maria was told a day before the 2014 World Cup final that his club Real Madrid was pressuring his national team not to play him through his injury. Di Maria ended up missing the final, Argentina lost in extra time. But when they reached the final in 2022, and I saw his name in the XI, I just knew what was coming. I wasn’t wrong either. These stories are the toll these players pay for crossing through the gates of hell. To me, they have come to matter as much as a player’s on-field repertoire. Perhaps this makes me a worse scout, but I’m hoping it makes me a better writer. I am okay with this trade-off.

What’s the Story?

This international break, I’d recommend digging deeper to unearth more. It makes rooting for players easier, almost effortless, even in the worst of ruts. At Leicester U16s, there were a few months when Ben Chilwell was told on every Thursday for months that he hadn’t made the squad. For a kid that age, it was devastating. Chilwell’s dad though pushed him on, took him to the park for extra kickabouts and sprints for hours. At the end of those few months of grief and soul-searching, Ben wasn’t just in the squad, he was captaining the side. His dad would go on to see him lift the Champions League in Porto.

Ben’s father passed away in June, less than a month before preseason. Since then, Ben scored in the first preseason game against Wrexham, was appointed the club’s vice-captain and endured a third hamstring injury in 11 months, which will lead to him missing nearly a full season’s worth of games this year. His loss off-the-field eclipses all of those things, but I know I’m still not betting against him being back to his best when he returns.

Just a couple of days ago, Ousmane Camara signed a new contract with Auxerre, sheepishly blushing in front of his teammates in the dressing room as they urged him to say a few words. It was beautiful to see; far more poignant than what he managed on his debut start for the club. I watched Ousmane for 72 minutes in that first game. I could tell you which foot he prefers, how quick he is, what his tendencies are under pressure. But not for one moment would I have known about the two years it took to get to those seventy-two minutes.

That’s why these stories matter.