Quakes catch Camara by surprise
Thirty-five picks into Friday’s MLS SuperDraft and already deep into the second round, Mamadi Camara saw the Vancouver Whitecaps select Georgetown centre back Brendan McDonough.
Watching it with his girlfriend and her mother, the SFU soccer star figured that was his last chance.
“I wasn’t even fully following it round by round. I was just waiting on the teams I thought could pick me. After Vancouver didn’t pick me, I actually turned it off. I really did,” he said, chuckling.
“I was basically looking at the three Canadians teams and Cincinnati. I thought those were the realistic destinations for me.”
His phone rang. It wasn’t an MLS team on the other end. It was his sister.
“She said, ‘Hey, you actually got drafted!’ But it honestly took me about five minutes to believe it,” he said. “I wanted to see it on TV first. And then, I saw it was official … and I broke down a little bit. There were too many emotions going on at the same time.”
The San Jose Earthquakes had taken him with the 46th pick, a selection that caught him completely by surprise.
Camara figured only the Whitecaps, who have drafted SFU players and had ample opportunity to scout him, or the Montreal Impact, his hometown team, would take him. Toronto was always an outside shot, and FC Cincinnati, now coached by Camara’s former SFU boss, Alan Koch, had stockpiled a serious cache of draft picks and was another possibility.
Instead, the 6-3, 180-pound winger-forward finds himself bound for California in a few days.
“I didn’t think any other teams from the States would take a chance on a Canadian guy. I guess I was wrong,” said the 23-year-old Camara, who previously played for CS Longueuil Soccer Club.
Now he’ll be an understudy to Chris Wondolowski, who is two goals away from being the MLS all-time leader, in San Jose.
“Anyone that knows MLS knows about him,” Camara said.
“He’s had a wonderful career — and he’s still going. Just looking forward to meeting him and seeing what I can grasp of his experience and knowledge.”
Camara was one of six Canadians — and the only NCAA Division 2 player — invited to the MLS Combine. The Great Northwest Athletic Conference player of the year — he had nine goals and a team-high 13 assists in helping SFU to a 17-2-0 record and a No. 1 ranking nationally — acquitted himself well, even cracking the top six in the 30-metre sprint.
But his body of work over his four seasons atop Burnaby Mountain — making the GNAC first all-star team each time, and the All-West team the past three years — caught the eye of Quakes manager Matías Almeyda and general manager Jesse Fioranelli.
MLS teams have trended away from relying on the SuperDraft to build their rosters, with most second-rounders ending up on USL squads and not the first team. But the Quakes have an exceptionally strong relationship with their USL affiliate, Reno 1868 FC, which has developed at least four first-team regulars.
And it’s clear that Almeyda and Fioranelli have a strategy in mind from their draft picks — a haul that rated among the best in MLS — all of which they have gone on record as calling “long-term commitments.”
Camara came to Canada from Guinea when he was just four years old.
San Jose’s first pick in the draft, No. 2 overall, was Siad Haji. The 19-year-old winger has a story much like Alphonso Davies; he was born in a Kenyan refugee camp after his parents fled war-torn Somalia, before moving to New Hampshire in 2004.
Their second pick was Seattle University midfielder Sergio Rivas (second round, 26th overall), originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, but eventually a Dreamer (DACA) after crossing the border to New Mexico as a young child.
Their respective talents may be judged on different levels, but their drive was a big part of why they were selected. Camara knows he’ll have to keep fighting.
“I feel like I’m joining a good staff, and one that believes in young players,” said Camara.
“Even going into the combine, I had to prove a lot, coming from a Canadian school, coming from a Division 2 school. People overlook you.
“It’s pretty unclear what the future is going to hold — whether it’s first team, second team or whatever — but I’m just looking forward to pre-season.”
The last SFU player selected in the MLS Super Draft was striker Jovan Blagojevic, who was picked by the Vancouver Whitecaps, 54th overall, in the third round of the 2015 draft. Like Camara, he was the GNAC and NCAA West Region Player of the Year, but he only lasted a single season with Vancouver’s USL side.
That history doesn’t faze Camara.
“The gap between NCAA and MLS is just huge,” he said. “It makes sense for (it to be) hard for us to win a spot. It just shows that only the people who put in the biggest effort, who prove that they belong, are going to make it.
“I grew up with that mentality. I don’t like having things handed to me; I like to work for things. It makes the reward taste better. I’m definitely ready to work for that MLS contract.”
In Vancouver, a similar situation awaits McDonough. His odds of cracking the Whitecaps’ first-team roster are small — none of last year’s Super Draft selections remain with the Vancouver team, and the last second-rounders to see first team minutes came in 2011 — but the Whitecaps saw enough in him to spend a draft pick on him.
“No one can put pressure on kids that come from the draft, in my opinion,” Whitecaps coach Marc Dos Santos told media on Friday.
“It’s players that are still in development, players that come from a different world, a different type of dynamic. The jump from college to MLS is very, very big, but there are surprises in sports.
“I can’t say this is a player that is going to be a trialist, a player that is going to try to get into the team. We’re happy that we’re going to have him join our club. And let’s see where this story goes.”
Rounds 3 and 4 of the SuperDraft are Monday, starting at 10 a.m.