With the official website’s excellent 100 Players Who Shook The Kop just coming to an end, I thought I’d look back at a player who finished 91st in the list and lit up the Kop for short time in the early days of the Houllier regime: Titi Camara.
So what made him so special? So downright lovable? What best captured those magic moments of his?
Those flashes of the Camara.
Was it that smile?
Sure the smile. It had to be. For who else’s ever beamed so readily and engagingly? Who else’s ever invoked your average Red to dredge up some long entombed mothering instinct to take the protagonist home and sit him proudly on the mantelpiece beside Granny’s old carriage clock?
But what about that shiny bonce, too?
Oh yes, that bonce. On top of who else’s shoulders did there ever sit one so delectable, so Uncle Festerish, so perfectly domed, so innocently demanding to be smoothed and patted till the end of time? Too right, the beloved bonce.
And that moving display of emotion for his father?
Without a doubt. Can anybody who watched him after he scored in that game against West Ham ever dispute we were witnessing a genuine and fully paid up member of the human race opening up to us? Surely a cameo to touch anyone who has ever lost anybody dear.
And yet, at the end of the day, was it not simply that box of tricks of his, beguiling us all with the delicious recipes he kept unfurling from within it?
Yeah, that’s it. Of course, the box of tricks. What else could it have been all along?
I can picture them now. The sheer impishness of those flicks, that outrageous backheeled one-two with Jamie Redknapp at the Kop end against Villa, the lavish pirouettes and strutting, those majestic gliding surges with head held so imperiously high like a king surveying his domain.
And then, disarmingly, the whole thing brought back once again to less regal dimensions with that wonderful beaming smile. The one to melt the hearts of a million Kopites.Aah, Titi! What a gift from heaven, you truly were. What a star you rose to be. What a hero to Reds, young and wizened alike.
Yet who had suspected it, barely a few months before your arrival?
Certainly not after the disdain of Barry Davies during that UEFA Cup Final for Marseilles. His dismissal of you as some sort of buffoon, casting aspersions on your wondrous talent. And we, all too predictably, like the fickle herd we fans so often tend to be, half wondering whether those ill-considered asides of his carried any credibility. Half duped by those inane witterings. As if we should ever have listened to some Jack-of-all-trades microphone prattler from the Beeb.
So who really was the buffoon, eh, Barry?
Not our delectable Titi. That’s for sure.
No sirree.
For how we all grew to love this magician from the Tropics. Our very own man from Guinea. Oh okay perhaps not all. But surely all those with big hearts? And there are always many of those around Anfield. Why his substitute warm-ups alone were worth our admission money. Again the warmth of those flashing smiles to his ever-growing adoring legions would have it, conjuring a rapport that would ripple the entire length of the touchlines. Embracing him from all corners of the ground.
But especially from the Kop.
Indeed, the mind boggles at how rapturously the old swaying Kop would have lapped him up. Yet even the more sedate seated version adopted him as their very own. Those Skip-to-my-Lou strains; that special Titi ditty of his serving to strike perfect accord with his touchline routines.
Ti ti ti ti ti, Ti ti ti ti ti, Ti ti ti ti ti, Ti Titi Camara
Has anybody ever touched their toes quite so poetically? With quite so much poise?
I doubt it.
But what of our Titi’s antics on the pitch? The arena where it really mattered. That gleaming white T shirt, peek-a-booing above the white-rimmed neck of his red shirt might well have picked him out from others similarly attired for action. His box of tricks may indeed have been the portents of something momentous. Were they, though, all they purported to be?
Fear not. For this man had class from engine to shining chrome trims. From boot to bonnet. Purring like a Limo yet primed to roar like a turbo-charged Ferrari, he could move through the gears as if on high octane. And could he produce the goods to go with it.
Boy, could this fellow play footy. Jeez, could he mesmerise his opponents. Us too. And his team-mates to boot.Goals flowed from him. Be they the tap-in or the breathtaking. The ridiculous or the sublime. They, though, were merely the icing on his cake. And what a cake it was, harbouring a richness most mere mortal footballers can but dream of. An exquisiteness fit to serve before the most discerning football crowds. An array of ball skills, running and dribbling, passing and shooting - not to mention that magical box of tricks – to satisfy even the most audacious Brazilian starlet.
When delivered to the accompaniment of that intoxicating smile, the package became nigh irresistible. Certainly for Reds like myself.
So where did it all take him, our African marvelman? In the Anfield pecking order of adorability, I mean.
Well his reign scarcely lasted, of course. Titi’s first season had barely passed when the giant shadow of Emile Heskey was allowed to scuttle him. Despite Titi single-handedly shouldering our attack for most of the previous season he was discarded like some oily rag by our manager’s wet dream of the functional automaton. Indeed, the player never really even made it as far as first team regular. And I know there are those who will scoff at the accolades I have afforded a player scarcely bedded into the first team.
And yet, from a strictly personal perspective, I would stick him right up there at the top of the Anfield folk heroes. Yes, in the Anfield pantheon I would rank him alongside Elisha Scott and his infamous scowling and swearing to the Kop, the Saint and his portly ball juggling down the Kop end before every game and dear fist-clenching Joey Jones all arms and legs a kilter greeting his fellow Kopites. His relationship with the crowd I would submit to be that special. In such a brief space of time it was little short of remarkable. Quite unlike anything I can recall witnessing at Anfield before and certainly since.
Long may his memory continue to enthrall.
Keep that Camara rollin’, Titi my son.
With a cowardly anonymous board member blabbing to the Mirror that Rafa wasn’t quite his cup of tea, and invented nonsense designed to unsettle Gerrard once more being written by tabloid guttersnipes, the lads stuck the proverbial two fingers up to those determined to undermine the club.
side of the arena. The foolish would stand in the sawdust ring and goad the bull, before plunging headfirst for safety into a “protected area” in the centre of the ring, which was nothing more than a rudimentary wooden box.