LAFC’s Final Hero Kei Kamara Stands Up for the Cup

There’s never been a more Kei-Kamara goal.

Just him and his man in the area. A teasing cross. Half a blink and he’s off his man’s shoulder. He rose high, as if chasing something precious, heading the ball into the net and sending a halo of sweat into the floodlit LA night.

It was the third goal, the deal-sealer on a 3-1 win for LAFC over Kamara’s old club Sporting KC in the 109th U.S. Open Cup Final. The roar, led by the 3252 superfans behind the goal Kamara just breached, was followed by the © heart-hands celebration. We’ve seen it for years from this player, in the colors of 11 different MLS clubs. But this goal, same as it was in form, felt different in spirit.

“This one’s special. This one’s big. It’s huge,” he said at the post-game press conference in a cream-colored, double breasted suit jacket, always stylish, as the goodwill of the local press, suckers for an old-man-still-doing-it story, spilled over him. “My babies are here around me now. They weren’t around in 2012.”

Kamara’s young son, Kendrick, fidgeted beside his dad. He wasn’t yet born in 2012, the last time Kamara won the Open Cup in his time with Kansas City. His daughter, Kierin, too shy to climb to the podium, smiled away with mom among the reporters. Before this night, in what he calls his “hometown” of LA, that 12-years-ago trophy had been Kamara’s only silverware in a nearly two-decade pro career.

Kamara is the oldest active player in MLS – eight days older than Atlanta United goalkeeper Brad Guzan. He turned 40 a few weeks before the Open Cup Final. But on the big night, as a sub and putting a shine on the showpiece, he was young. He was fast. And alive to the opportunities.

“To be on the same scoresheet in a Cup Final with Giroud,” he smiled and shook his head, referring to his new teammate and World Cup winner Olivier Giroud. “It’s amazing.”

The Long Road to America

Special. Amazing. These are words you’ll hear a lot if you sit down with Kamara and chat. His smile, the megawatt kind, is custom-made for a town like LA, where he couldn’t wait to return and play for a swansong of his unique and prolific career.

But let’s mark it here. There’s no reason for Kamara to smile as big as he does. With such openness. A welcoming kind of abandon. While his home is LA, there’s another one farther back. And there’s an ache in his voice when he talks about it.

Born in Kenema, Sierra Leone, Kamara came of age in the heart of a brutal 11-year Civil War. He witnessed executions when his home city was infiltrated early by rebels. “You woke up in the morning and there were dead bodies on the street, vultures eating their flesh.”

Soccer was the escape. When the shooting stopped, Kamara and his friends cleared a space in the streets and played. “We just kicked an old ball around,” he said, a warmth for his youth in spite of the horrors endured. “There was no league. No goals. It wasn’t organized. The field was wherever you made it. It was just fun, and we played until the sun went down or the shooting started.”

It was in LA, where he came after hiding in the jungle, and two years more in a refugee camp in Gambia, where he learned about the organized game. He plowed the usual route for a talented youngster: youth soccer, high school varsity and a star-turn at nearby Cal State Dominguez Hills. College ball lasted only two years because, when you score 31 goals in 47 games, you’re on your way somewhere up the ladder.

It was at that time, playing with the amateur Orange County Blue Stars in his two college summers, that he first learned about the U.S. Open Cup. And Kamara, who became an American citizen in 2006, smiles a little wider when he talks about a tournament open to all and for all. “It’s like the FA Cup in England – all the big countries have one,” said Kamara, who played in that very FA Cup in his one season with Norwich in the Premier League. “And what’s great is that it gives all teams a chance – an opportunity – like you’d never get any other way.”

It’s the day before his big Final, at the club’s training center in East LA, and the sounds of chopped high-speed scooters rip in the distance. The sun is blazing at mid-day. But no one gets past Kamara without a handshake and a hug after training: kitchen staff, coaches and academy kids – even his global star teammates like Giroud and Hugo lloris. They all stop to chat.

Kamara Speaks His Mind

He sits before cameras, lit to shine, just as comfortably. He’s been around too long to tow anyone’s line. “I love the Open Cup, I don’t agree with anyone trying to tear it down,” he said 24 hours before the big game, where he might well have finished a loser or an unused sub languishing on the bench.

“You don’t have to forget about the past to move forward. That’s not the right way. The Open Cup is for everyone and that’s what makes it special,” Kamara insisted. “It’s wrong to try to take that away. Think of the lower league teams, the amateurs, you kill their dream like that. I know what it means to those teams.

“It’s the culture, it’s the tradition,” he added, smiling to learn that a member of the 1958 LA Kickers – the first team from the city to win an Open Cup – would be on hand at this year’s Final. “It’s about being a part of what came before you.”

When the smoke from the flares cleared after the final whistle at BMO, when the parties in the field-level club suites were just starting to kick off, Kamara hit the same note again on center-stage at the press conference. When he was in that spotlight, this 40-year-old striker, inevitably nearing the end of the road of his playing days, took time to defend the U.S. Open Cup.

“Don was here. On the podium. He gave me a medal. Let’s get him in here and make sure he doesn't take MLS out of this tournament,” Kamara said, referring to MLS Commissioner Don Garber, who before this year’s tournament spoke of plans to remove all MLS first teams from U.S. Open Cup play. “He better not take this away. This is amazing.

“This is American soccer right here,” said this now two-time Open Cup Champion, whose 147 career goals make him second, two ahead of Landon Donovan and behind only Chris Wondolowski, in the all-time MLS scoring charts. “Please don’t take our history away.”

Kei Kamara is a man who doesn’t need to defend a cause on his big night. He could have sat back and made it all about himself. But that’s not him. He came through the kind of flames most of us couldn’t dream of – and he did it with a smile that oozes pure California sunshine and gratitude.

No one deserves a night like this year’s Open Cup Final more than Kei Kamara – at BMO Stadium, a few miles from his old high school, his name in lights and the crowd screaming for more. Will it be his last trophy? Maybe. Will he take this chance to retire and go out a Champion? Maybe, but…

“I feel good,” said the one-of-a-kind Kamara, an Open Cup Champion in more ways than one. “I like playing and being a part of all of this.”

Fontela is editor-in-chief of usopencup.com. Follow him at @jonahfontela on X/Twitter.