With all due respect to Brian McBride, the single best season any MLS forward has ever had in the air came in 2015 and it happened in McBride's old stomping ground of central Ohio. Kei Kamara rose up and put defender after defender down on the ground en route to 22 goals, eight via headers. He was damn near unstoppable, and if it wasn't for Sebastian Giovinco's incandescent season, would have won MLS MVP.
Kamara hasn't been able to replicate that feat in the subsequent seasons. He bounced out of Columbus early in 2016 after a penalty kick dispute with Federico Higuain, and then bounced around the attack for the Revs over the subsequent year-and-a-half. Kamara has still been productive – 19g/7a in 4200 minutes for the Revs isn't bad – but nowhere near what he was with Crew SC.
I felt, at this point last year, that New England should've flipped Kamara for assets that better fit their needs, and that the most obvious team to flip him to would be Vancouver. Here's why:
The 'Caps love to play long, they love to cross the ball a ton, and they love to score headers. Their whole approach to the game aligns damn near perfectly with Kamara's strengths, and should minimize his weaknesses.
The 'Caps, to their credit, realized as much. They tried to get Kamara from the Revs last winter and were finally able to get their man this offseason. They have found a forward who fits their needs. And he knows it too.
The question is if it's too late. Kamara turns 34 in the middle of the season, and is staring at the tail end of a career that's been better than most seem to realize. If he stays healthy he'll almost certainly grab his 99th and 100th regular season goals sometime this spring, and if he can hold off Father Time for the entire year he'll almost certainly top 15 goals while giving Vancouver the centerpiece they need.
