Former African Footballer of the Year Emmanuel Adebayor has revealed for the first time why he demanded and eventually secured the iconic jersey No 25 elegantly won by erstwhile Super Eagles captain Nwankwo Kanu during his days at English Premier League side, Arsenal.
The ex-Togolese forward with Nigerian heritage switched from French club AS Monaco to Arsenal in 2006 where he enjoyed three trophy-laden seasons under the legendary Arsene Wenger and in a rare interview, Adebayor has now given a rare insight about his days at the Emirates.
“I was 21 when Arsene Wenger first called,” Adebayor now turning out for Turkish Super Lig side Istanbul Basaksehir hinted in an interview published by influential London tabloid, The Daily Mail.
“As a Monaco player I was on holiday in Togo, playing street football. A friend picked up my Nokia. He said Wenger is on the line. I said “Yeah, yeah, don’t be silly, put the phone down.” It rang again. I picked it up and it really was him! I hear “Hallo!”’ he says, perfecting his Wenger impression. ‘I was like “You are interested? I am more interested!” I will be there tomorrow for you. He said “Keep calm. Two days later, it was done.”
He said “Any conditions?”
“All I wanted was Nwankwo Kanu’s shirt number 25 and his locker. He was my idol.
“Wenger said “Your wish is granted! Amazing.”
Adebayor spent amazing three seasons at Arsenal from 2006 and 2009 and remarkably made 104 appearances with an impressive 46 goals under his belt.
Yet the often controversial striker who later moved from Arsenal to Manchester United in an acrimonious manner, has revealed how racist abuse sparked his infamous City celebration as well as the night he almost took his own life and what it’s like working with ‘beautiful manager’ Wenger and ‘killer’ Mourinho.
Dressed in double denim, Emmanuel Adebayor drops to his knees, leans back and spreads his arms wide.
He is in an empty room at Istanbul Basaksehir’s stadium but his mind is elsewhere. He is at the Etihad Stadium, eyes glaring and striding the length of the pitch towards the Arsenal supporters.
He is agitated. He sees the coins, the bottles and the vitriol pouring down. And he does not move an inch.
“If a sniper shot me, he would not have struck me down,” Adebayor insists.
“I was in my spiritual zone.
“Kolo Toure said to me: “I was looking at the pictures and you did not flinch once.”
“I did not feel human anymore. The abuse was too much. I was ready to die. I just looked at them and thought “There are things you do not do.”
Adebayor is a player of remarkable gifts. He made over 250 appearances in English football and scored 122 goals but so often, it is his personality that rules. His iconic celebration, shortly after leaving Arsenal for Manchester City in 2009, remains the lasting image of his career.
Almost a decade has passed but Adebayor’s indignation remains. In person, he is riotous company, an intoxicating blend of fire and ice. He remains addicted to the Premier League, reeling off the permutations of each fixture for the top-four battle, and his girlfriend and daughter reside in his Hampstead flat.
His stories – the day he brawled with Nicklas Bendtner – make you laugh, while others – his vivid flashbacks of the murderous attack on Togo’s bus – produce only sorrow.
Taking his seat, he is in nostalgic mood.
Yet after three years in Arsenal , relations deteriorated. As Wenger sought to balance the books, Adebayor departed. He was not the only one and he is quickly exasperated.
“Kolo, Fabregas, Clichy, Van Persie,” he says, picking up the pace. “They all left. I don’t think Arsenal have shown love to keep players. You are on huge money at Arsenal. But if you can double your salary, we are footballers and in 10 years, it is over.
“If you are Cesc, going to Barcelona, he will make more money, more sponsorship, and he is going home. What did Arsenal do to keep him at the club? Absolutely nothing. Now the fans say he is not loyal. When you leave Arsenal, you become a traitor, regardless of what you have done. Van Persie was the same.”
How did Wenger respond to the celebration?
“Wenger had nothing to tell me anyway. People think football is family. It is business.
“I did not just wake up one morning at Manchester City. I had signed a five-year contract at Arsenal. I came back for pre-season and Wenger said “You have to leave”. I said “Why should I leave?” I asked for one more year and if it does not work, I will walk off. He’s like “No.” He said if I stayed he would not put me in the squad. When you hear that, you have to go.”
He is by now stirring in his seat. It is when conversation turns towards English football and racism that Adebayor’s most compelling points emerge.
“This is the thing,” he says. “And it is why I have not said anything about racism the past few weeks. When I celebrated, the FA fined me, they punished me. Nothing happened to the Arsenal fans. So it [racism] started with me and long before me.
“I remember getting to the stadium and Arsenal fans were there. All I heard was the chant: ‘Your mother is a whore and your father washes elephants.’
“My father worked in currency exchange and my mother is a businesswoman. But this went on and on. So how can I reply? I didn’t have a voice to go against thousands of supporters.
“And now the same FA are trying to stop racism? I’m sorry. It does not work that way. Today is too late. We are tired. Enough is enough. I see Mario Balotelli and Didier Drogba on Instagram. How many times do we have to post something? We have to react. We have to leave the pitch.”
Adebayor is a complex and deeply emotional man. His relations with his family are fractured and he has been bruised by football. After a career playing in Monaco, London, Manchester, Madrid and Istanbul, he is now 35.
“Getting old and getting tired,” he quips. “I love England. But I got a name. There was a time when everything that touched Adebayor was negative. They said Adebayor liked money. Not only Adebayor moved clubs. To really understand me, we need to go home to Togo.”
Nostalgia carries him back to a childhood in the Kodjoviakope compound of his home country. The word poverty barely does justice to his upbringing.
“People say I was dreaming,” he says. “But the life I have now was beyond dreaming. Forget it. We had no facilities. The pitches were sand. Hit the ball hard and the goalposts fell down.
“We had a leaky roof. I woke up every night to dry it out with a bucket. We had no electricity. We used candles and lanterns. We did not have a toilet. To ease ourselves, we walked a mile to the beachside. It would be like dropping your shorts on Miami Beach. The wind was unbelievable, so you can imagine… but that was my life.
“We went into different neighbourhoods to find a television to watch football but I did not believe the players on the screen were real. I thought it was a game where you drop pictures into the black box. It was only when I played abroad and people said they saw me on TV, that I started to believe George Weah was real. Maybe Zidane is real. That is how I saw football through a child’s eyes.”
He first arrived in Europe as a teenager in Metz. Isolated in a foreign country, his vulnerabilities emerged. For the first time, Adebayor falls briefly silent. He takes a deep breath and then spells out, quite shockingly, how close he came to taking his own life.
“I was 16,” he says. “All I wanted to do was help my family out but they put huge pressure on me. I could not cope with it. When a family is poor, everyone is poor and there is huge solidarity. People will take a bullet for you. But when one makes it, it is like you owe everyone.
“At Metz I was on maybe £3,000 a month. My family asked for a house worth £500,000. The club were tired of me because of my behaviour. I remember sitting on my bed one night and just thinking “What am I doing here? Nobody’s happy with me, so what is the point of living?”
“There was a pharmacy below my apartment. I bought packet after packet of tablets. They did not want to sell it to me but I said it was for a charity in Togo. I made the preparations, I drank all the water. I was ready to go. Then I called my best friend at midnight.
“He told me not to rush, that I have things to live for. “You have the potential to change Africa.” I thought “You are a dream-seller and I am not buying any dreams right now.” But he took me out of the moment. I thought God must be keeping for something.”
Such feelings were amplified on January 8, 2010. Adebayor was the Togo captain on the day the national team bus was ambushed by terrorists. The driver, the assistant manager and a media officer were killed. Several players were wounded.
As his friends bled and cried for help, Adebayor and his team-mates needed to remain motionless: “For 42 minutes, all we heard were gunshots. Left, right, front and back. I just heard friends shouting but we could not move or do anything.
“As captain, I told everyone to call their families. I called my girlfriend and I told her “Listen, I am about to go.” She said “Go where?” She was pregnant. I said “If the child is born, if it is a boy, name him Emmanuel Jr. If it is a girl, name her Princess Emannuela. She said “What are you talking about?” And then I just had to say “I will call you later if I am still alive.”‘
Having encountered such darkness, it is unsurprising when Adebayor speaks with abandon over football’s more trivial topics. Yet his reflections are fascinating.
His favourite team-mate? He grins. “Craig Bellamy. He comes straight to you. ‘You know what Emmanuel, today you were shit.’ Others in football whisper at the back.’
At Arsenal, there were disagreements with Van Persie and Nicklas Bendtner: “Why would I come to an interview, lie to people and say Van Persie is my best friend? He has his character and I have mine. There was tension.
“I’m a free guy, I come to every club, walk into the changing room and sing. I danced with Thierry Henry and had huge respect for Dennis Bergkamp. But at Arsenal, when you walk into the dressing room, there is a shoe rack.
“You take off your trainers and wear the club sandals into the dressing room. Bendtner walked in with his own shoes twice. I said: ‘Bendtner, there is a law here and nobody is above it.’ He was younger than me and barely playing.
“We are bigger than you but nobody else walks in with Prada, Gucci… He said ‘I don’t care.’ I said ‘Don’t do it again’. The next day, he did the same and we jumped into a fight.”
Adebayor was part of an Arsenal group that appeared to fall apart in slow motion, each summer surrendering a piece of the jigsaw to their rivals.
“It reached a time where you would go on holiday and be checking the Daily Mail website to see who is close to leaving for Barcelona or Milan. Dropping one by one until Arsenal are what they are today. I would not be surprised if Lacazette or Aubameyang leave in the summer. Nothing surprises me anymore with that club.”
His analyses of Arsenal’s shortcomings under Wenger are cutting.
“Wenger is a beautiful manager,” Adebayor says. “But no matter the situation, we had to play our football. I remember those days going to Stoke.”
He blows out his cheeks. ‘You know it’s a heavy afternoon with Rory Delap’s throw. I’m a big guy but what about the rest of the team? We came out of the dressing room in the corridor and you hear clink, clink…the studs from Stoke… and just think “Oh my God”. Shawcross, Huth, Crouch… Then you see our team of 60kg players.
“We had quality but for some games, I am sorry, it was not enough. United and Chelsea were technical but so strong. Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic. Rio insulted everyone on the pitch. He is proper psycho!
“But Vidic was the tough man, the nastiest, like running into a rock. He could block a striker with a single finger. He walks on you, he says sorry, he kicks you, he says sorry. He shouts at you and makes a little bit of spit come out. This guy was ready to kill.”
Did Arsenal hurt from defeats like United did? ‘We swallowed defeats. Games where I scored and we lost 2-1, I thought my job was done. Rio would have come to me “if you want to be happy, score three.” I saw him argue with Rooney and Giggs.
“These are the things we didn’t have. We were nice. We had a gentlemen team. We play, we pass around but when it comes to being dirty, we couldn’t.”
During a loan spell at Real Madrid, Adebayor saw Wenger’s antithesis in Jose Mourinho.
“One is calm and the other is not. I remember we were losing 2-1 and we were playing badly. Thierry Henry was going mental. Wenger came in and said “Calm down, we are perfect, 65 per cent of the ball, we have crossed 25 times”. Thierry is telling me “Who cares? We are losing”. That is the difference between Wenger and Mourinho.
“At Real, we were winning 3-0 at half-time. He came into the dressing room and went mental. He kicked the fridge, threw water, and killed everyone.
“He once killed Ronaldo after he scored a hat-trick. He said: “Everyone says you are the best in the world and you are playing badly. Show me you are the best.” Cristiano took it.
“Ronaldo could score a hat-trick but talk about the one he missed. He trained with us at Madrid as though he was training with his kids. Passes with his back, control with his neck. He once kept the ball for five seconds with one touch! How is that possible? In the gym, wow. Sergio Ramos and I were the strongest. But then came Ronaldo. “You think that’s hard?” he’d say. We’d do five reps and he’d do 30.”
He pauses and there is introspection: “If I was open to those criticisms like Cristiano, when I was younger, I would have been a different player and had one more step up.”
The smile returns. He staggers to his feet:”I’m having fun here in Istanbul. We have me, Robinho, Arda Turan, Gael Clichy. I was with him at Manchester City, then Arsenal, now here. I would not be surprised if he bought land in Togo without telling me!
“My last challenge is to win a league title for the first time. We are top and I really want it,” he sounded off.
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