Boubacar Kamara puffs out his cheeks and grimaces ever so slightly. The Aston Villa man is one of the best midfielders in the business but still the crash-bang-wallop of the modern Premier League takes his breath away.
Villa’s much-changed team are still looking for their first point and goal of the season after defeats by Brighton and Arsenal, and they travel to Hull on Saturday with the promoted team seeking a third successive win.
Unai Emery has lost six key players and brought in 11 new ones but at least he still has Kamara, probably Villa’s most important player and firmly on the road to full recovery after the second serious knee injury of his career.
But what a challenge it is. According to data from analytics company Skill Corner, in partnership with the SCOUTED platform, the Premier League outstrips every other league in five key physical metrics – distance covered, speed at which a player changes direction, top speeds, explosiveness and intensity.
According to Frank Lampard, one of the greatest midfielders of the Premier League era, the increasing emphasis on athleticism is probably irreversible.
When we put it to Kamara that the modern Premier League is becoming ever more like the NFL, he nods emphatically. ‘Yeah – that’s right,’ he says. ‘Is it as physically demanding as it has ever been in my career? Of course – by far.
The rough and tumble of the Premier League still takes Boubacar Kamara’s breath away. ‘Every contact, everyone fights for the ball,’ he says
The Frenchman has cemented his reputation as one of the finest midfielders in the Premier League since joining Villa in 2022
‘Every contact, everyone fights for the ball. The striker fights, the goalkeeper fights, everyone wants to win the ball, everyone has become stronger. In some moments during the game, it’s only fighting.’
It is a fight Villa need to win. At Brighton, they were felled early in the bout and never climbed off the canvas, losing 4-0 in a feeble performance.
And though Emery’s men threw a few more punches against Arsenal, it was still the champions who landed the knockout blow to secure a 1-0 victory at Villa Park. Emery’s men have not registered a shot on target this season.
The battles are becoming harder every year. In three full seasons under Emery, Villa have finished fourth, sixth and fourth, qualifying for the Champions League twice, as well as lifting the Europa League.
Even though their work in the transfer market leaves much to be desired, they have also been severely restricted by UEFA rules that seem tailor-made to favour Europe’s wealthiest.
‘It’s really difficult – every year the Premier League is so tough,’ Kamara reflected. ‘You have 10 teams fighting every year to get in Europe.
‘But to keep this mentality and consistency, and to finish every year in the top four or top six, and also to play in Europe every three days, going far in those competitions… it’s really not easy.
‘We saw last year and two years ago that at certain times of the season we were without certain players at crucial times. So when we saw the table at the end of the year we were proud, and we believe we can do even better this season.’
Emery’s long training sessions and even longer stints in the analysis suite have already raised eyebrows among those new players used to lighter regimes at previous clubs.
Life under Unai Emery is intense, and not for everyone. But so many of Villa’s players have reached new heights under the Spaniard
Kamara suffered a serious knee injury in an FA Cup tie with Tottenham back in January
The Villa boss leads every day’s training and twice a week, in the afternoons, he will conduct 90-minute briefings. Sometimes, those are followed by individual chats with players.
It is intense stuff and there are unlikely to be many of the new faces in the starting XI at Hull. Yet as Kamara warns, the new players need to get up to speed – and fast.
‘With the meetings, you don’t have a choice – you need to sit and watch,’ Kamara says. ‘In training, every day you have the same task.
‘When new players arrive, they do extra work with Unai’s assistants. They teach them what they need to do so their adaptation can be as quick as possible. We have so many good, intelligent players in the team, too.
‘We will see what the manager wants. In some games, he wants us to play low block with good transitions. In others, he wants us to press high, keep the block high and play a lot of passes. Every game, we change our structure.
‘When we’ve shared the dressing room for three or four years with the same players, we are sad for a day or two but after that we are happy for them.’
As difficult as this start has been for Villa, simply having Kamara around is a bonus.
When he is in the team, Villa’s results are significantly better than when he is not. In that context, it was a huge achievement both to win the Europa League and finish in the top four last season, given Kamara did not play a game after injuring his knee at Tottenham in January.
Not only did he miss Villa’s march to Europa League glory, culminating in the win over Freiburg in Istanbul in May’s final, he also lost the chance of representing France at the World Cup. It was the same story before the 2022 tournament. Kamara is 26 and has yet to represent his country at a major tournament.
‘It was difficult the first one or two months after my surgery,’ admits Kamara. ‘You can’t work, you have to stay at home’
‘Mentally it was difficult the first one or two months after my surgery,’ he admits. ‘You can’t work, you have to stay at home, ice treatment, do some exercises.
‘This is why I didn’t watch Villa play during that time, either at the ground or on TV. You want to play then you look at your knee and realise you can’t.
‘You keep going, work, and try not to think about football, think more about family, my kids, my friends. But it’s tough.
‘Before the game in Istanbul, I walked on to the pitch and I wanted to play, but I knew I couldn’t. Afterwards, I sat in my spot in the dressing room and I was a little bit sad, because I couldn’t do anything.
‘So yes, in some moments it’s difficult but I tried to keep focused and now it is time to look forward again.’
