TRIBUTES AS EX-STOKE BOSS STEPS DOWN
CHRIS Kamara had only just turned 40 when he returned to Stoke City to manage a club that he had captained just eight years previously. As a young manager he had already helped Bradford win promotion to and then stay in what is now the Championship, leaving them in mid-table in January 1998 after a fall out with chairman Geoff Richmond, and taking over at Stoke the same month.
Stoke had won one in 10 up to that point – ironically against Bradford.
The crisis deepened and one win, 11 debuts and 14 games later, Kamara was gone as relegation took a grip. He could have gone back in at another club but instead he made an unexpected career move and took a reporting job with Sky Sports.
He was excitable, insightful and a big hit – and he has since gradually evolved into a treasure of the English game. That has been shown by the response to the news that he is to step down from the Soccer Saturday programme at the end of this season. He recently admitted that ‘live TV might have to take a back seat’ while he battles with an underactive thyroid that led to speech apraxia disorder – but he says he is now ‘nearly there’ in terms of his health. Presenters, colleagues and supporters up and down the country have been filing
their tributes and 64-year-old Kamara has clearly enjoyed himself. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t change anything. “I could have still gone on to be a manager elsewhere,” he told the Sentinel when he came back to Stoke in 2018. “I have been offered jobs since I’ve been at Sky. I could have gone down that avenue, but the road I’ve been taken down after Stoke is the best thing that could have happened to me.
“I’m certainly not grateful for what happened at Stoke because of the opportunity it opened up for me, certainly not. I’m still disappointed about what happened but what has happened since, for me, has been brilliant.” He added: “I took over when the club had just been beaten 7-0 at home by Birmingham City and looking from the outside I thought it’d be ok, I could go in and change things around and do things my way. “But the first week in charge as a manager I had to sell my best player (Andy Griffin) for £1.25m and then I’m on scraps. Obviously I made some mistakes, I’m not hiding away from that at all. “The only player I signed full-time, apart from free transfers and loans, was Kyle Lightbourne, who didn’t do the business for me. By the way, we didn’t pay £500,000 like it says in the record books, I can guarantee you that!
“It was difficult. I would have loved for it to have worked, but it didn’t. The club was on a slide and it was irreversible. Those three months were the most difficult of my career but, having said that, they were only three months.” Soccer Saturday presenter Jeff Stelling was clearly emotional as he paid a personal tribute.
He said: “The man is simply a genius. He was always immaculately prepared. “Within football he is so well regarded for his knowledge of the game. He’s a good man, one of the very best, a great friend. I am going to miss him enormously and I know viewers at home will as well.” An infamous missed red card is a regular on a Kamara blooper reel but colleague Paul Merson insisted: “For all the funny bits - and there are some hilarious bits - his knowledge of football is second to none. You can sit down with him and he knows absolutely everything.”