Titi Camara

Titi Camara
Personnel
Surname	Aboubacar Sidiki Camara
birthday	17th November 1972
place of birth	Conakry ,  Guinea
size	1.84 m
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
1986-1987	AS Kaloum Star
1987-1989	FCUS Ambert
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1990-1995	AS Saint-Etienne	94 (16)
1995-1997	RC Lens	70 (14)
1997-1999	Olympique Marseille	61 (12)
1999-2000	Liverpool FC	33 0(9)
2000-2003	West Ham United	11 0(0)
2003	→  al-Ittihad  (loan)	? 0(2)
2003-2004	al-Sailiya	14 0(7)
2005-2006	SC Amiens	26 0(9)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1992-2004	Guinea	38 (23)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
2009	Guinea
1 Only league games are given.

Aboubacar Sidiki "Titi" Camara (born November 17, 1972 in Conakry ) is a former Guinean football player . As a strong sprint striker , he was best known in France in the 1990s for his time at AS Saint-Étienne , RC Lens and Olympique Marseille . He also took part in three African Championships for the Guinean national team. Between 2010 and 2012 he was Guinean Minister of Sport in President Alpha Condé's first cabinet .

Athletic career

Club career

Titi Camara first played for AS Kaloum Star in the Guinean capital Conakry . There he impressed with speed and an acceleration that was reminiscent of sprinters and was quickly a key player in Kaloum's team. His achievements in the first season were noticed beyond the national borders and so he landed in France in 1987 with the help of European agents. After his first years at FCUS Ambert, he became part of the legendary AS Saint-Étienne not far from there in 1990 . With the "Greens" he spent five seasons and scored a total of 16 goals before moving on to RC Lens in 1995 . There he managed the sporting breakthrough with a total of eleven league goals in the 1995/96 season - identical to the goal scoring of the two years before, when Camara had developed into a regular player in Saint-Étienne. In Lens, Camara established himself as one of the most noted French strikers and so after a good two years the next step to the top club Olympique Marseille followed . In Marseille, too, the Guinean was a crowd-pleaser who, in addition to his speed, stood out for his high level of commitment. But although he was also able to excel in European competitions, he was not able to win a major title with "OM". After he had won the French runner-up in 1999 and reached the final of the UEFA Cup against AC Parma (3-0), he was drawn to the English Premier League for Liverpool in June 1999 for a transfer fee of 2.6 million pounds .

Despite his only 18-month phase with the "Reds", Camara was also popular there, which was mainly due to the fact that he developed his talent at special times. With the goal on his debut against Sheffield Wednesday , he aroused great expectations in the Liverpool appendix, but in the following period he earned the reputation of being primarily a substitute player for revitalization. Ultimately, he completed 37 competitive games in the 1999/2000 season, 24 of them from the start and only one of his ten goals he scored after a substitution. This included his winning goal against West Ham United on the day of his father's death. After the first year at Liverpool, Camara fell back in favor with coach Gérard Houllier and two months into the 2000/01 season, in which he no longer appeared for the Reds, he was hired for £ 2.2m at West Ham United on. Notwithstanding this, Camara remained popular in Liverpool and was regarded as a kind of “cult figure” - for example, in 2006 he was voted 91st in the poll “100 Players Who Shook The Kop”.

With the "Hammers" trained by Harry Redknapp , Camara was unable to revive his career. In the course of the good two and a half years he remained completely without a goal in his fourteen competitive games. Shortly before the end of his contract, the now 30-year-old was loaned to al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia for four months from January 2003 . After the end of the 2002/03 season, he continued his career in Qatar at al-Sailiya , before ending his active career with the French second division club SC Amiens until 2006 .

Guinean national team

Titi Camara was a key player in the Guinean national team in the 1990s and early 2000s and was largely responsible for ensuring that the country once again played a significant role in African football. After a fourteen-year absence, Guinea took part in the Africa Cup with Camara in 1994 . There, however, you couldn't get past the group stage any more than four years later . Only in the autumn of his career did Camara move into the quarter-finals against Mali (1: 2) with Guinea in 2004 .

After the active career

Almost three years after the end of his active career, Camara became the Guinean national coach in June 2009 as the successor to Robert Nouzaret . The term of office lasted only three games and after poor results and a lack of support in the association, he was released again. The road to politics followed. After campaigning for Alpha Condé in the 2010 Guinean election campaign , Camara was appointed sports minister in its first government team. As a political novice, however, he found it difficult; its decisions and initiatives were often criticized. Camara also faced allegations of corruption and embezzlement. In October 2012, he finally fell victim to a cabinet reshuffle.

After his excursion into politics, he founded the “Racing Club de Guinée”, a football academy in his home country. In 2014, he got second-degree burns in a fire in his home after a fire in the garden got out of control. He was found guilty in January 2016 by a Guinean court after assaulting his ex-wife.

Web links

• Titi Camara in the database of soccerbase.com (English)
• Titi Camara in the L'Equipe database (French)
• Titi Camara in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Players - Titi Camara (LFCHistory.net)
2. ↑ ^{a b c} L'héritage de Titi Camara laissé au football Guinéen! (Afrique Sports)
3. ^ Titi terror over fire (The Sun)
4. ↑ Where Are They Now ?: Titi Camara (Friends of Liverpool)