Kei Kamara

The top African goalscorer in Major League Soccer this season is Kei Kamara, a 28-year-old striker from Sierra Leone who in 29 matches has scored 11 goals for Sporting Kansas City. With Kamara leading the attack, Kansas City currently leads the Eastern Conference in MLS and is a top contender for the trophy in the upcoming league playoffs.

Kamara was born and raised in Kenema, Sierra Leone’s third largest city, and he traveled to the United States as a teenager to escape the civil war in his homeland. He eventually settled with relatives in the Los Angeles area. Kamara’s turbulent childhood and dangerous journey is the subject of a documentary, titled simply “Kei.”

The documentary also takes a look at Kamara’s return to Sierra Leone for an African Nations Cup qualifying match. He scored his first two international goals for Sierra Leone’s national team, nicknamed The Leone Stars, in a 4-2 victory over Sao Tome and Principe in a 2013 Nations Cup qualifier on June 16th, 2012.

Kamara says soccer is worshiped in Sierra Leone, a country that’s bidding for its third appearance in the Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s premier football tournament. Earlier this month, Sierra Leone drew 2-2 with visiting Tunisia in Freetown. The teams will meet again October 13th in Tunisia, with the winner of the two match series advancing to the 2013 Nations Cup in South Africa.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Kamara has become a big fan favorite for his goal celebrations and also for his humanitarian work. Last year, he was named the 2011 Sporting Kansas City Humanitarian of the Year, an award voted on by media, coaches and fellow players. Kamara has supported Schools for Salone, a charity that is helping to rebuild schools in Sierra Leone, as well as Right to Play, an organization that uses sports and games to improve the lives of children in Africa and around the world.

Wale “Lucky Boy” Omotoso
Photo courtesy Top Rank

Unbeaten Nigerian prizefighter Wale “Lucky Boy” Omotoso is moving closer to a world title shot after defeating Puerto Rico’s Daniel Sostre over the weekend in a welterweight bout in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fighting at the Thomas and Mack Center, an arena located on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Lucky Boy (23-0, 19 KOs) dominated the action, with the three judges scoring it 80-72, 79-73 and 79-73, all in favor of Omotoso.

Omotoso’s rise in the rankings is being watched and guided by Freddie Roach, the Hall of Fame trainer who runs the Wild Card Boxing Club in

It’s not a stretch to say Wale “Lucky Boy” Omotoso is one of pro boxing’s top welterweights. Photo courtesy Top Rank.

Hollywood, California. The Nigerian fighter says he’s lucky to have Roach as his trainer, and he’s lucky to be based in the Los Angeles area after a challenging, violent and dangerous childhood in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. Omotoso says he learned to fight as a member of a street gang in Lagos. He says as a boy he saw people shot and he learned to run zigzag to avoid bullets.

Omotoso fought his first 18 pro bouts in Australia and then he moved to the United States, where he signed with Top Rank Boxing, a company that has promoted some of the sport’s greatest fighters, including Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and Manny Pacquiao. With a little luck, Top Rank might have another world champion soon in Wale “Lucky Boy” Omotoso.

African football fans are looking forward to a big weekend of qualifying matches for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in South Africa. The final qualifying round features 15 home-and-away series. The 15 winners, to be determined by total goals in the two games, will join host South Africa at African football’s premier event.

One of the marquee match-ups this coming weekend will be in Abidjan, where The Elephants of Ivory Coast will host The Lions of Teranga from Senegal. African football analyst David Legge describes this qualifying series as worthy of a Nations Cup final.

Team captain Didier Drogba is the all-time top scorer for Ivory Coast.

The Elephants, Africa’s highest-ranked team, are led by veteran striker Didier Drogba, who recently moved from Chelsea in England’s Premier League to Shanghai Shenhua in the Chinese Super League.

Ivory Coast, the 1992 Nations Cup champion, reached the final of this year’s competition, losing (8-7) to underdog Zambia in a dramatic penalty kick shootout in Libreville, Gabon. Senegal, meanwhile, is hoping to bounce back after a very disappointing 2012 Nations Cup campaign. The Senegalese lost all three of their group matches and left the tournament as perhaps the most embarrassed team.

Zambians are very proud of their team, The Chipolopolo, for lifting the Nations Cup trophy for the first time in Libreville. To get to South Africa and defend their title, the Zambians will have to beat The Cranes of Uganda, who last competed in the Nations Cup tournament in 1978.

Zambian football great Kalusha Bwalya

Football Association of Zambia president Kalusha Bwalya is not looking past the Ugandans, though, and he says they’ll provide a tough test. This series will kick off Saturday in Zambia’s Copperbelt city of Ndola, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The return match is scheduled for mid-October in Uganda.

The 2013 Nations Cup tournament will begin January 19th and goes through February 10th. Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg will stage the opening match and the final. Soccer City was also the venue for the 2010 FIFA World Cup final, in which Spain defeated the Netherlands, 1-0, in extra time.