Welcome back to Where Are They Now? as we take another trip down memory lane. This time we’re heading to Senegal with an ex-Wolves, Wigan, West Ham and Stoke ‘legend’.
Senegal’s remarkable run in the 2002 World Cup had far-reaching implications for the Premier League. Fans of clubs were treated to a professional camel impersonator, a wardrobe and a Salif Diao. There was one arrival that rather flew under the radar though over in Wolverhampton in 2003.
Henri Camara scored two of the Senegalese goals at the World Cup but he had to wait a year for his move to the bright lights of the Midlands. He had just scored 14 times in Ligue 1 for Sedan which, in early-mid 2000s Premier League talk, meant he was highly sought after and probably wanted by Arsenal or Chelsea or something. Instead he went to Wolves where he scored a grand total of… seven goals.
Camara’s ability to hit the target was questionable at best but a late season purple patch certainly helped his stats. At least five Wolves fans reported concussions thanks to being hit by wayward Camara shots and two of them weren’t even in Molineux at the time. Still, Wolves got relegated and the fans loved their wayward Senegalese striker. Right up until he decided that to be the superstar he wanted to be, he couldn’t slum it down in the Championship like a peasant and didn’t show up to pre-season training.
He spent 2004/05 on loan with Celtic and Southampton with neither spell going particularly well. He was gone from Celtic by January and then relegated with Southampton. That didn’t put Wigan or Paul Jewell off and he joined them in the summer of 2005.
It was at Wigan Camara enjoyed his biggest success. He helped the club to the League Cup final in 2006 and had two excellent seasons at the club. However, by 2007 he was out of favour under Steve Bruce who clearly favoured the consistent hilarity of Emile Heskey as opposed to the erratic finishing of Camara. Two atrocious loan spells at Stoke and West Ham later and he was released from the club in 2009.
Poor Henri needed to get paid so he decided that he best thing he could do was to slum it in the Championship with the peasant footballers for a season. He scored four times for Sheffield United as Wolves fans laughed from the Premier League.
Camara then turned up in Greece where he’s been ever since. He’s played for a number of sides not called Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, AEK or PAOK but equally as difficult to spell. Remarkably, he’s apparently still playing in Greece to date at the ripe old age of 40 with his (as far as Wikipedia tells me) 17th club. He’s had more clubs than I have pairs of socks.
Now I couldn’t find hilarious miss compilations for Camara strangely but I did find these rubbish YouTube montages about him. So, we have the English football one complete with Windows Movie Maker editing and graphics.
And here’s seven minutes of him scoring about five goals in Greece.
Until next week, where I’ll probably just hunt some kind of striker for this again. Or maybe Salif Diao. He was hilariously rubbish.