Exclusive: Momoh Kamara's agent discusses Sierra Leone U-20 captain's journey
- Andrew Olsson
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
The Africa U-20 Cup of Nations is rapidly becoming one of, if not the most scouted competitions, in world football. The increased interest in Africa from the football world continues to bring a large number of scouts and agents to the U-20 AFCON and the U-17 AFCON so that they can discover previously unknown talents who are eager to try their luck abroad.
Sierra Leone U-20 captain and star player Momoh Kamara is already spoken for. One of the breakout stars at the 2025 edition in Egypt, Pan-Africa Football can reveal that Kamara will be moving to the United States with Major League Soccer club Minnesota United after the competition. His rise to stardom comes after having to persevere through highs and lows from his early experience in European club football.
Kamara's Italian agent, Giulio D'Alessandro, spoke to Pan-Africa Football's Andrew Olsson about the football odyssey of Kamara from his native Sierra Leone and the obstacles he experienced in Europe. D'Alessandro also discussed how fake agents threatened to derail Kamara's transfer prospects as well as his own football story as a scout and agent and the active role he plays in promoting African players with his company, D'Alessandro Scouting. Read more from our conversation below:
How Momoh was discovered, his time in Nigeria and his early experience in Europe
Giulio D'Alessandro: "It's a wonderful story because we were involved in a project with a Nigerian club to promote players. They asked about a good way to do that and we spoke to them about the Viareggio Cup which is one of the most important cups for youth teams. There were players like Totti, Roberto Baggio, Del Piero, Lahm, Schweinsteiger, Iniesta, Xavi. They all played at the Viareggio Cup when they were young so we organized everything for the Nigerian club on the technical and logistical side.
So we sent coaches from our company, D'Alessandro Scouting. They trained the team in Nigeria and in this team were two players from Sierra Leone who were among the best players in the team. Momoh was for sure the best player of the team.
I remember the first day of training, the Portuguese coach I sent there called me and told me 'we have a player who can play at Porto or Benfica without any problem' because he knew very well the level of same age players at top clubs in Portugal...(he was) was speaking about Momoh. When the club arrived in Italy for the tournament, my company took care of the expenses.
After the tournament (the 2023 Viareggio Cup), I organized a trial for Momoh at Braga. It was a very good trial but unfortunately, for some reasons I prefer not to share here and due to the responsibility of some people around Momoh at the time, Braga lost interest in a potential negotiation. There were other mistakes made by people around Momoh which led to a long period without a club before he eventually moved to Leixões in Portugal.
He did not have the possibility to play in the first team (with Leixões). None of us know why because me, I could not speak with Leixões because I was not Momoh's agent at the time."
Momoh reunites with Giulio, returns to prominence with Sierra Leone U-20 team
Giulio D'Alessandro: "We came back into the life of Momoh after one-and-a-half years. He was not having a good time in Portugal. We understood that he was left without a work permit and without the possibility of coming back to Portugal because he was sent to Sierra Leone for the qualification tournament for the U-20 AFCON.
We told the Youth Coordinator of Sierra Leone to call Momoh because he was outside of Sierra Leone for three years at the time. We told him that Momoh was the best player of Sierra Leone without any doubt.
At the same time, we went to Sierra Leone for a scouting project. So luckily, it was a couple of months before the U-20 AFCON qualifying tournament, the WAFU. We told the youth director to call Momoh. Luckily they did it and Momoh won the Golden Ball of the WAFU tournament where Sierra Leone qualified for the U-20 AFCON finals.
Due to the work permit issues in Portugal, he could not come back to Leixões so his contract was (terminated). After working on his case for a long time, we became the exclusive agent of Momoh.
Momoh's style of play
Giulio D'Alessandro: I would like to start with a comparison in terms of playing style and position. I guess you remember Jay Jay Okocha of Nigeria. Momoh is a player who can play as a #10 or #8 in a 4-3-3 or 3-5-2. He has impressive technique and control. He is very fast and very powerful.
He can protect the ball so he is difficult to put down in the challenge. He is not tall but very strong, mostly in the legs. Fantastic shooting and dribbling ability. Very good vision and passing quality. The thing that we like more is his ability to be the leader of the team. When he is very confident in an environment like he is with Sierra Leone he can show leadership when speaking with teammates and can very much be the captain.
Fake agents
"We have a lot of agents now who are pretending to act like they are Momoh's agent. We are discovering new fake agents every day.
These kinds of situations always happen with top players and create problems for the player himself. You are a club and you have interest in Momoh and you get a call from a person who is pretending to be his agent who is trying to get some money...they make the clubs lose time and lose access to the player himself.
A good club that would have been a good choice for the player has lost maybe one week, ten days. First, you need to be an official FIFA agent. Second, you need to have an official representation agreement signed by the player. We have a two-year agreement with Momoh that started in January.
We are the only entity that legally can speak for Momoh. So when the clubs know...they go on Transfermarkt, they see us (listed as Momoh's representation) and contact us. But there are some clubs who write us and discuss why other people are going around saying they are Momoh's agent. There were like twenty fake agents.
Those clubs that have interest in Momoh are of course a bit scared to make a deal for a couple of weeks (because of the fake agents). These situations never help the player. Things that help the player are transparency so that the player can only think about playing football and the agent who can work on the next step. The player of course has the last word."
Giulio speaks about his experience as an agent and scout and his agency's ongoing project in Sierra Leone
"So I started to work in 2009 as a scout. My job at the beginning was to be Head of Scouting for agents because I was very good at (knowing about) different countries. There was no Transfermarkt and Wyscout during this period so to make reports on players was very difficult, finding (statistics), so that was my dream.
So in 2015, I was able to open a company because we were working on young players like Patson Daka, Samuel Chukwueze, Victor Osimhen, Kelechi Nwakali. I was scouting players like that when they were playing qualification for the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations so they were very young... 15, 16 years old. I was sure about almost all of them. The African continent was always an interesting market for me.
My company started to work with many clubs that were outsourcing their scouting activities. Then I founded a scouting department with thirty scouts around the world and with that we reached the very top level. We made important transfers and then we were involved with projects like the one in Nigeria.
Mostly now, one important project in Sierra Leone. That is why we have many players from there (Giulio is the agent for several players in the Sierra Leone U-20 team at the ongoing tournament).
We are there to modernize the country on the football side so they founded the first youth league in their history this year and we helped them to get the first advanced video camera to record all the league matches and put in a platform called Eyeball where every guy from Europe can watch every player of the league.
Then, we are putting them on Transfermarkt because you can see that many African leagues are not on Transfermarkt. We are doing a massive job to bring the Sierra Leone league to Transfermarkt so those are important services for the federation and why we are representing many players of them.
Of course, we earned their trust and showed them how we work and that is why we are having very good success in this project. So, we are the first supporters of Sierra Leone because we know many players. Many of them are fantastic boys that we know personally and we are very happy...they really deserve it."
