Aboubacar Camara is a 14-year-old centre-back who plays for Afrique Football Elite and the Mali U-17 national team.
Unsurprisingly, considering how young he is, Camara looked a little bit under-sized at this tournament. He is around 5’10″ (1.7 m) with a slim build. Obviously, you would expect him to fill out a bit and maybe even grow a bit taller in the coming years. Despite his small stature, Camara was quite an effective defender. He did not back out of challenges and was quite good at using what physicality he did have to either win physical battles or prevent opponents from beating him cleanly. Camara was quite good at mopping up loose balls thanks to decent footspeed and generally strong defensive positioning. However, he did sometimes get sucked into central areas of the field and leave too much space between himself and the left fullback. This usually happened when the opposition was moving through central areas quickly, either through a player dribbling quickly or through quick passing play. Camara seemed to panic a little bit in these situations, which might be a function of him being so much younger than everyone else.
Camara demonstrated some excellent passing play in this tournament. He was very effective at breaking lines, particularly at finding the space between a centre-midfielder and a winger to spring a fullback or winger into space. Camara also likes to step forward from the backline and try to receive passes in the midfield. He has some decent long range passing. However, his decision-making was quite inconsistent. He sometimes put teammates in trouble by passing to them while they were under pressure and he would sometimes clear the ball away when it was very possible to keep controlled possession. But, again, we need to remember that he is only 14 and playing against older players. So, given that he showed some really strong passing technique, I would expect that to be a strength for Camara by the time he reaches senior football.
Camara, at age 14, looked completely adequate in this tournament. A lot of his faults and inconsistencies can be explained away by his age and he showed some major plus skills. Therefore, I think Camara has the potential to reach a very high level.
Target Scouting 