In a recent issue of the brilliant weekly glossy magazine produced by the French sports paper L’Equipe, there is a picture that tells you all you need to know about modern football. It shows the owner of Manchester City, Sheikh Kaldoon al-Mubarak, leaving the stadium after the home game against Wolves. He is being driven away in his Bentley; all around are the black-suited muscle. To the left are a few fans, pale, slightly plump men and women in light blue replica shirts. They are on the same page, in the same place, but light years apart.
And it’s only in the context of this absurd, corrupt, narcissistic world of extremes that you can begin to understand the behaviour of City’s excitable new star Emmanuel Adebayor in their enthralling 4-2 victory last weekend. His journey to Eastlands, via Metz, Monaco and Arsenal, began in extreme poverty in Lome, Togo. He is very close to his mother and surrounded by relatives, family and hangers-on, some well-meaning, some not so. It is up to him to look after them, which goes some way to explain why he is famously keen on money. As Adebayor himself remembers when he was just 15, ‘At the airport, my mum said “Go to France and you can change the way this family lives”.’ And that’s not just African: remember how Michael Owen bought houses for himself and his seemingly endless extended family all in the same street in Hawarden, North Wales, when he first went to Liverpool? What a nightmare.
Adebayor is a product of the French soccer academies which cost E80 million a year. Out of the countless youngsters in the Francophone world, 350 make the academies and only 100 or so go on to make the grade in pro football. At Highbury, Arsene Wenger developed him extraordinarily well, but the supporters eventually turned against him. He had always had vicious chants from opposing fans, and last Saturday these came from the Arsenal end: ‘Adebayor, Adebayor, your father washes elephants, your mother’s a whore.’ How racist does it have to get before the police intervene?
All this doesn’t mean that you can go around trying to provoke a riot or committing actual bodily harm on former colleagues. But it sort of explains why you might want to. Adebayor had had an imperious game against his old team, defending brilliantly and surging in attack. And shortly before his own assault on Van Persie, Adebayor had been the victim of a two-footed studs-up tackle from the Dutchman that could have broken a leg.
None of this excuses what Adebayor did, but please spare us the sanctimony. No one stops the vile chanting; no one bothers to condemn the Arsenal thugs who hurled stuff from the stands at Adebayor, knocking out a steward in the process. Football’s a vile, thuggish and beautiful game. And for Adebayor, it’s a long way from Lome.
If you don’t believe that individuals can change a footballing culture, then how about this? There was a presentation laid on for the England team the other day about the 2018 World Cup bid. It was scheduled for 11.30 a.m. The officials were setting it up in a leisurely fashion, and had reckoned without Fabio Capello’s passion for punctuality. But bang on 11.20, in trooped the entire squad of fresh-faced multi-millionaires, all neatly suited and expectant, with not a mobile, a T-shirt or an agent in sight. Just think what Capello might achieve in South Africa.
Roger Alton is editor of the Independent.
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