He was capped 22 times for France in the 1970s, and at club level, he played Division 1 football for Nîmes, Nice and Paris Saint-Germain.
[3][4] Adams was born and raised in Dakar until the age of 10, when he left his native Senegal on a pilgrimage to Montargis in the Loiret department accompanied by his grandmother, a devout Catholic.
[7] His first competitive cap came on 13 October of that year, in a 1–0 home win over the Soviet Union for the 1974 FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
[7] During his tenure with Les Bleus, he formed a stopper partnership with Marius Trésor which was dubbed La garde noire (black guard).
Because many hospital staff were on strike during that time, errors were made by his anesthetist and a trainee, who later admitted to being "not up to the task"; as a result, Adams suffered a bronchospasm which starved his brain of oxygen and he slipped into a coma.