Wednesday 6 April 2016 15:07, UK
Kei Kamara has quite the story.
After fleeing his native war-torn country Sierra Leone at the age of 14 and moving to America two years later, Kamara pursued a career in football which would see him be drafted by Major League Soccer side Columbus Crew in 2006.
Now aged 31, Kamara has played for four MLS clubs and also has had stints in the Premier League with Norwich and the Championship with Middlesbrough.
And after his English adventure, Kamara returned to Major League Soccer with Crew SC at the start of 2015.
He returned with a bang, scoring 22 goals in the regular season to make him the joint-top goalscorer last season with Toronto's Sebastian Giovinco.
Columbus are winless since the start of the season, losing two and drawing the last two of their first four matches, and will be looking to turn around their fortunes against Didier Drogba's Montreal Impact this weekend - live on Sky Sports.
Ahead of the game, we ask Kamara 10 MLS-related questions.
How would you assess Columbus' season one month in?
It's been a bit rough. We haven't really got the results we wanted but it's really early in the season so we can't get too frustrated, but four games into the season we would expect to get a win.
It's early in the season, you call some situations rough and others where we haven't got our groove yet. We've been playing a lot of games away and everybody is having the first few games in their house, and they have to make an impression in front of their home crowd.
Do you feel teams are stepping it up against you because you reached the MLS Cup final last year?
100 per cent. After the past couple of years the way the coaching staff has bred this team and our style of play, and the success we had last year, going into every game this year teams have a lot more respect for us and everybody wants to make sure they win against us.
So they think they've figured out our style of play so it's elevated our own style of play a little bit more.
What's your gameplan against Montreal this weekend?
We respect they're a good, experienced team. They're a team that were a tough team to play in the play-offs (last year) but at the same time we're going into their house and they need wins early on in the season as we need to get our first win.
We have to be smart and figure out the way we play and maybe they have a little bit of revenge to come for us given how it finished last year.
But for us it's about complete focus and do like what we did in Dallas (last weekend) and trying to dominate the game.
You could face Didier Drogba this weekend, do you feel individually you play a similar style of football?
I've been a Chelsea fan for the whole of Drogba's career and I've watched him to kind of imitate how he plays, what he does and how he dominates. You can see that in some of my headed goals.
When it comes down to it now, for me here it's about how my team succeeds because when my team's successful, how we play is just perfect for where my strength lies which is air balls and finishing in the box.
Do you work on being aerially dominant or do you have a natural knack for scoring from crosses?
Right now, having the amount of goals I scored last year, it's about getting myself free in the box now because I'm not new to the league. It feels like everybody have to pay attention to me because of what I did last year.
This year, now every time there's a cross, I have two defenders coming to mark me.
How was playing in England for Norwich and Middlesbrough?
It's the best thing that I've done. Growing up in Africa and wanting to play in England, it's the best league in the world. For me, when I had a chance to go play for Norwich it was a dream come true.
Every minute, every second I was in that facility and just training with everybody else, I had a big smile on my face every day and I cherished it.
The style of play just suits me perfectly. It didn't work out at the end of it when I wanted to stay at Norwich.
Then I had a second chance to go back to England where it didn't work out so well at Middlesbrough with a lot of changes happening over there.
Now I'm back in Columbus and (head coach) Gregg Berhalter has a really good system of play and his system suits my style, me being in the box and being the finisher.
Is the MLS standard of play closer to the Premier League or the Championship?
The Premier League is a league of its own. It's the best league in the world to me but the MLS standard is a bit higher than the Championship.
In the Championship you may have one or two teams that dominate for the whole year and gets automatic promotion and another goes through the play-off system. I know that it's meant to be one of the hardest leagues in the world and I understand that because it's pretty brutal.
In MLS there is a more different styles of play and again there's not one team that dominates every year, so with that there's a good balance.
If one or two teams play good football in England then there are teams in the Championship that are always going to come up whilst in MLS, you never know who is going to win the league every year.
Would you consider returning to England or rather see your career out in MLS?
Before I left Middlesbrough I did have a few chances to play for a few different teams and one of the things that affected me to not be able to play was renewing my work permit because of the situation in Sierra Leone, the Ebola and how we dropped in the FIFA rankings.
Because of all that, my status was one of the main reasons for why I decided to come back and play in America but things continue to go well here then I wouldn't see myself making a change, but at the same time I never close the door.
I'm 31-years-old now but for me it's the best time in my career, and who knows? Drogba was doing really well at 31 when he was at Chelsea so you never know.
Won the 2015 FIFPro Merit award, was it nice to see your humanitarian work get recognised?
It was really amazing. When it was brought to my attention I didn't really think much of it until finally when you're the winner of the award. This is not just us doing a little work in Sierra Leone this is us being recognised by FIFA, the biggest of all sports organisations, so it's amazing and it's going to go down in history for a while.
Going from being a refugee to being one of MLS' most respected players, how do you look back on it all?
Life is beautiful. I'm blessed to just be here. A refugee coming out of Sierra Leone and coming to America, going to school and playing at college level then getting drafted to play in MLS then moving to England, it's just been the best dream ever.
I wish more refugees could say they're living their dreams and I don't want to it take for granted at all.
