When Emmanuel Adebayor arrives at Highbury this week, the first instinct at his welcoming photo-shoots will be to liken him to an addition from Africa that Arsenal made some years ago. Adebayor, tall and gaunt, will be easily caricatured as “the new Kanu”. He will like that. He will like less the suggestion from his recent employment references that there is a bit of the young Nicolas Anelka about him: all the truculence and only hints, so far, of the talent.
Adebayor, signed from Monaco earlier this month, has been quite a noise at the African Cup of Nations. He came here as Togo’s standard-bearer, the principal reason why his tiny sliver of a nation have found a place at the World Cup for the only time in their history. Togo are no superpower, but once Adebayor had scored more goals in qualifying than anybody else, more than Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto’o, Mido or any of Africa’s finest, a minor miracle had been wrought. They came to Egypt to curious, admiring glances. Alas, they won’t stay very long and their superstar is in disgrace.
After Togo’s first defeat here, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Adebayor heard himself being described as a “cry-baby” in front of a room full of reporters by his country’s head coach, Stephen Keshi. Beaten again by Cameroon in midweek, his nation’s stay at these finals was suddenly shortened.
Togo play their final match this afternoon and the fact that Adebayor is available is its own surprise. He threatened to walk out seven days ago, after Keshi had left him out of the starting XI on grounds of insufficient preparation -he had missed part of the training camp ahead of the tournament -and Adebayor in turn accused Keshi of seeking some sort of business relationship with a player whose financial prospects have been raised considerably by his move to Arsenal. All very tawdry. A sort of uneasy peace has been maintained since.
What was Adebayor’s state of mind ahead of his departure for London? “I feel ready for it, and that’s the most important thing,” he replied tersely.
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Adebayor is 21, slender as a cane and speaks his words very quickly. Keshi, a former World Cup captain of Nigeria and in his day a fine defender for leading clubs in Europe, talks fluent candour. Adebayor, Keshi told me, was “a baby. He has got to grow up. He is a big player in Togo but if he is going to be a star, he needs to act like one. If he doesn’t learn at Arsenal, with Arsene Wenger, I don’t know where he is going to learn”.
Arsenal have Adebayor partly because he had done all the developing he was going to do at Monaco, for whom the coming of the January transfer window was always going to call time on the striker’s 2A years there. He had started only half his club’s league games this season, and scored a single goal in the French championship. The departure of Didier Deschamps as Monaco head coach in November signalled the beginning of an unsettled period. Deschamps had been an ally; the new Monaco coach, Francesco Guidolin, was not. Guidolin brought in his compatriots Christian Vieri and Marco di Vaio, both strikers, and Monaco encouraged Adebayor to look at alternative options. West Ham United and Arsenal, the player reports, had both been interested in the summer. Tottenham joined in and apparently pursued their interest right up to the day Adebayor underwent his Arsenal medical.
It had been a dizzying period for the player, Keshi suspects. He was lionised in his country, and at a crisis in a club career that had taken him to France, and Metz, when he was a 17-year-old. “Maybe he got carried away,” says Keshi.
“When we ended up qualifying for the World Cup all my players thought, ‘Wow!’ I can understand that. Most of them are young kids. Maybe he is still in that dreamland. There’s the few weeks off he had as well. Monaco said to him, ‘We don’t need you’. Then he’s joined Arsenal.”
Adebayor does enjoy certain indulgences as his country’s sole superstar. There is a story about his home in Lome, the Togolese capital, occasionally being mistaken by western tourists for one of the city’s few luxury hotels. He cannot help but sense his importance to a national team whose remaining pedigree amounts to no more than a couple of players with experience in the French first division and many who work in Togo’s undistinguished domestic league. So he was surprised to be dropped last Saturday. Hours before the first Nations Cup fixture Keshi was strongly advised by the head of the Togolese Federation to put Adebayor back in the starting XI. Keshi obliged, by which time Adebayor said no.
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He will not make Arsenal’s first team immediately, with the likes of Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp around, though Adebayor has a determined sense of what he eventually wants to be for Wenger. He asked for No25 on his shirt, Kanu’s old Arsenal number. He wears No4 for Togo, just as Kanu does for Nigeria. The new Kanu? “No, no, no, no,” protests Keshi, who played alongside and coached Kanu.
“Kanu is a big boy. Although he looks a bit the same as Kanu, his style of play is not. Kanu’s knowledge of the game is greater. I know he looks at Kanu as an idol, but if he wants to follow him, Adebayor needs to be more humble. He’s a good boy, but when it comes to his job, he has to re-evaluate.”
Adebayor says he’ll handle it. “I’m level-headed and I want to show I’ve got what it takes,” he says. “If I’m joining Arsenal, it’s because I have the quality. The best place to show it is on the pitch.”