The Case Against Adebayor

By: Martin | September 14th, 2009

Before you continue reading, I urge you to go this link, which compiles the relevant “incidents” involving Adebayor into easily viewable gifs.

Hopefully you didn’t get so outraged you broke your computer, and are still here. The FA is reportedly investigating what Adebayor did in the match, and if there’s any justice, he will face a substantial suspension. Because the bottom line is this–on three separate occasions during the match, Adebayor did something which could have very well resulted in a red card. That he got away with just a yellow is an absolute joke.

As you can see from the gif, Adebayor at the very least went over the ball to dangerously kick Cesc in the shins. That tackle could have easily caused an injury, and we should count our lucky stars Cesc was able to shake it off more or less unscathed.

Then, of course, there was the stomp on Robin van Persie’s face. When I first saw it, my initial reaction was that it wasn’t intentional–even Adebayor, I thought, wouldn’t be so mean-spirited as to do something like that. But after reviewing it, it seems clear that he did, in fact, intentionally stamp his foot down on Robbie. His entire body and momentum is going to his left, but as he’s in the air, he sticks his right leg to his right up in the air, and stomps down and to the right. The ball was already yards away at that point, so I just don’t see any other explanation. He may not have meant to get his face, but it was clearly a cynical, malicious move. While it’s hard to say that Robbie was “lucky” given that his face was bleeding pretty profusely, he is lucky in the sense that if it had been a couple more inches to the side, he could have caught a stud to the eye and been permanently damaged. A broken nose or broken facial bone could have also happened quite easily, and he is lucky in the sense that the damage appears to be pretty superficial.

And then, of course, there was the baiting of the Arsenal fans. Adebayor has said he was emotional, but there’s really no excuse for it. Yes, fans were on him all game, but the bottom line is that there is a certain minimal standard of professionalism that comes with being paid vast sums of money to kick a ball around, and not actively trying to incite fans to riot goes along with that. Football has come a long way since the days of Hillsborough, but as the recent West Ham-Millwall brouhaha showed us, football violence is still quite a real thing, and we need to discourage it. The least we can expect is for the players themselves not to try and incite opposing clubs’ fans.

All in all, it was a thoroughly dick-ish performance from Ade. Reading the comments, commenters seem to fall into two general camps: (1) he showed us what a huge d-bag he is, I’m so glad we sold him; and (2) he showed us what a talented striker he is, we should have kept him. Readers of this blog know that I fall firmly into camp (1), so I won’t microwave those arguments for now.

But I will say this to those in camp (2). I think your argument rests upon the assumption that the Adebayor we’re seeing for Manchester City would have been the Adebayor who suited up for Arsenal. And I just don’t think that’s true at all. The problem with Adebayor was always his attitude and motivation–when motivated, I’d say he was one of the five or so best strikers in the world, but when he wasn’t, he was run of the mill at best. Last season for us, he seemed unhappy and unmotivated all season long–to watch a player jog around and go through the motions in a Champions League semifinal against Manchester United was truly, truly maddening. His goal-scoring ration last season was almost identical to Bendtner’s–why in the world would he expect him to be any more motivated to come play for Arsenal this season?

Now he’s playing great, because he is motivated. And why is he motivated? As his antics on Saturday clearly showed, his motivation isn’t to either (a) help Manchester City win trophies; or (b) please Manchester City fans. If it was, he would have kissed the badge and celebrated in front of City’s fans, whom he apparently loves so much now. But that’s not what he did. What he did was go out of his way to harm Arsenal’s players and taunt Arsenal’s supporters. Which shows quite clearly, I think, that he’s motivated at the moment to play hard in order to prove Arsenal wrong.

Let’s put aside the issue of exactly why he bears such a grudge against the club that: (a) rescued him from obscurity at Metz; (b) trained him and developed him from a skinny, ungainly giraffe of a player into a world-class stiker; and (c) paid him gobs and gobs of money. The real issue here is that you can’t use anger and the desire to “prove someone wrong” as a motivator for very long.

It won’t be too long before his vengeance-wish against Arsenal fades a bit. And then what will his motivation be? A desire to win trophies? That didn’t work at Arsenal, why would it work anywhere else? The mounds of money he’s making? Ditto. The bottom line is before long he’ll stop being so motivated to prove us wrong, and then Manchester City will be left with the same player we had to watch last season–a guy with a world of talent who isn’t willing to work hard, has a prickly relationship with teammates and fans, and needs constant adulation if you don’t want him to start complaining and sulking. And as far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to him.

So hopefully he’ll face a lengthy suspension from the FA, which if imposed will keep him out of domestic competition for a while. But at least he’ll be able to play in European matches…oh, oops, forgot–he went to a club which couldn’t even qualify for the Europa League out of “ambition.” Guess he’ll just be sitting at home counting his money while City relies on its only fit striker, Craig Bellamy, for a little while, then.