Amateur
Rami registered as a youth player for Étoile Fréjus Saint-Raphaël, then known as ES Fréjus, in 1994 at the age of nine. Despite harboring ambitions of playing football professionally, Rami only played the sport as a hobby and worked for city hall to support himself. He made his amateur debut for the club during the 2003–04 season while Fréjus were playing in the Championnat de France amateur, the fourth division of French football. He appeared in four matches in his first season. In the 2004–05 season, Rami appeared in 24 matches as Fréjus finished mid-table.
Ahead of the 2005–06 season, Rami switched to playing in central defence. He initially played as an offensive player often in the midfield, but following an injury to a teammate, whom Rami described as his best friend, his coaches inserted him into defence. The transition was a success with Rami appearing in 30 matches with Fréjus finishing mid-table for the third consecutive season. Midway through the campaign, Rami was offered a trial by professional club Lille OSC. Eager to leave the amateur club, he took the opportunity and after a week's training session with Lille, which Rami described as "hard", he was signed to an amateur contract with Fréjus receiving a meager €10,000.
Famous quotes containing the word amateur:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)