Its a pressure cooker when you are a country’s most recognized superstar. And Adebayor is known as the King of Arsenal in his home country of Togo. The country only sells football jerseys bearing the name Emmanuel Sheyi Adebayor. Being a superstar allows you to get away with a lot.
In one example, Adebayor refused to board a plane for a World Cup qualifier against Zambia because he feared the plane would crash. He then said that he would go only if the Togo FA chief made the trip.
Adebayor said: “My life is very dear to me and, if we have to go down, we’ll all go down together with the president.
“There are rumours that, if we get on, the aircraft will go down.”
In the end the team left without Adebayor with the FA chief refusing to go because of a family bereavement.
The Guardian is reporting that Adebayor’s Man City transfer is being delayed and that the medical exam has been postponed because the player is so concerned that he will be perceived as greedy with the lure of a £150,000 weekly wage the only reason to sign up with a lesser known club and away from a more honoured name like Milan, his first choice.
Adebayor is engaging in some PR work to find out how this move is playing out in Togo. His popularity has dipped with Arsenal fans and this has not gone unnoticed there. These perceptions can harden with incidents like the one above and portrayals of the player as arrogant and greedy can become distractions especially if you are taking on the country’s football hierarchy and have become an inspirational figure to a generation of young players with similar aspirations.
However Adebayor seems to be overly sensitive to this issue as Samuel Eto’o, Michael Essien, and Didier Drogba all iconic players for their countries and with similarly high wages do not seem to be spending time worrying that their country will think less of them. Eto’o was also lured to City with an offer that would make him the highest paid player in the world but there was no talk about how that was playing out in Cameroun.