OBETZ, Ohio – When Columbus Crew SC host D.C. United for what could be the rights to second place in the Eastern Conference Sunday, they’ll be without the league’s most dangerous target man.
Thanks to yellow-card accumulation, Kei Kamara’s caution in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Toronto FC means that the striker and his 22 goals will be suspended for the final match of the season, all but guaranteeing the Audi Golden Boot to Sebastian Giovinco, who is tied with Kamara at 22 goals apiece but owns the assists tiebreaker.
After Crew SC training Wednesday, Kamara admitted he’s having a rough week.
“It’s hard to stay positive with the whole situation,” he said. “No matter what [the reason] is, you don’t play the whole season and miss the last game of the season.
“I’m trying to stay positive around here a little bit at training with the boys. But for me to sit out here and watch the game, it’s my whole career in front of me like that. It’s hard.”
Kamara understands the league rules, but says he didn’t deserve the card and wasn’t warned that it could have been coming.
“Yes, I got a yellow card; you can say I shouldn’t have gotten the yellow,” he said. “But there should have been a little bit of respect. I didn’t get a warning all game. So to just get a yellow like that, it really **s with me.”
The striker says the card itself, a result of a fairly light foul near midfield, was a soft one.
“When it comes to a game like that and the way the situation is, it’s not like I was slide-tackling anyone or elbowing anyone,” he said. “There’s no way I should be getting a card like that to end the season that way.”
But that’s no surprise for Kamara.
Crew SC boss Gregg Berhalter said after the match that the striker is judged unfairly by MLS officials and should be better protected, and the veteran agrees.
“We all know this; it’s not new,” he said. “I don’t get calls like that. Look at me – I’m physical and I’m tall and you look at me to just be fighting with defenders all the time. It’s not one game; you can look at highlights and see how many times I’ve been crushed by defenders. And they just let it go.”
Kamara hasn’t shied away from the spotlight in races like All-Star voting, the Golden Boot and MLS MVP. He says losing out on the chance to compete for the scoring title will stay with him.
“It would have been a good battle to finish [on] Decision Day,” he said. “How awesome would that have been on Decision Day, for [me and Giovinco] to finish the season playing the last game to see how it ends up? It’s really difficult for me to think of this going forward for the rest of my career and thinking about what it could have been.”
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But all is not lost for Kamara, who says he’ll use Sunday as motivation to bring a title to Columbus.
“Like I said before, I came here not to win the Golden Boot – that was a great run – but to win something big,” he said. “It makes me more hungry going into the playoffs. That’s my motivation right there.”
That motivation, however, cannot be misconstrued as Kamara finding a positive. What’s the silver lining in the suspension?
“Nothing at all,” he said. “It sucks. It just sucks. There’s no other way to put it. I’m not going to go around the corners talking about it. It just sucks. It’s going to be hard sitting in that stadium watching the game.”
