Aboubakar Kamara Barred from Fulham

Yesterday, Fulham striker Aboubakar Kamara was arrested for causing bodily damage and criminal damage after clashing with a member of the Fulham staff at the club’s Motsur Park training ground. As a result, the club released a statement not naming names, but indicating the man in custody has been banned indefinitely from Motsur Park and from all other club related activities.

This comes almost a month after the infamous argument between Kamara and Aleksander Mitrovic at Craven Cottage in which the former stole the ball away from the latter for attempting the penalty against Huddersfield. Kamara went on to miss the penalty and was treated as one of the most hated men in modern club history by the supporters as a result. Later, it came from the BBC that the Frenchman was receiving racist abuse afterwards and manager Claudio Ranieri threw incendiary comments saying that he “wanted to kill him”.

Now no one human being ever deserves such treatment. This rings especially true when it is for as insignificant having ones actions potentially determine the outcome of a sport that is meaningless in the grander scheme of things in human existence. Kamara did go on to score Fulham’s lone goal in their defeat away to Arsenal on New Years Day and seemed to have made amends with the supporters. But what has come afterwards from Kamara’s behavior could have shaken the team spirit of Fulham Football club to its core.

First, he and Mitrovic were reportedly gotten into a heated exchange during a team yoga session and the two needed to be seperated by teammates. What came afterwards was Kamara training with the Under-23 squad and Ranieri has not selected him in any fixture ever since. If that is not a sign of the boardroom looking to sell him off in the January transfer window, I don’t know what is.

All this has boiled over with the most recent incident involving Kamara today where stability, togetherness and fighting for a common cause are required during a relegation scrap. Now the club, the players, the coaching staff and the rest working in Motsur Park and Craven Cottage are left having to pick up the pieces from a different type of fight.