Emmanuel Adebayor Nominates Himself For Biggest Asshole Alive

September 10th, 2008 | by: chris |

This morning a small little story went fairly unnoticed in the great list of football news for the day. Damiano Tomassi signed a 1 year deal with QPR. No big deal. As a player he is close to finished and QPR is still but a second tier side. But it reminded us that one of the great men of football is still alive and kicking – literally. And not a great man for a footballer, a great man period. His infamous story went something like this:

“This is very important because the kids see us as idols and we have to give a good example. Often football players are described as egoistic and vague, but this isn’t true and we are often involved in charity events. I try to do what I can, remembering that I am very lucky. I do a job that I love and I get a lot of money for doing it. This is a joy but also a big responsibility”, he once said during a conference at the University to which he was invited to talk to the young people. Tommasi spent almost the entire season in the infirmary the last year Capello coached the Rome team but Tommasi’s fate was even worse at the beginning of the next season. On July 22nd 2004, during the second pre-season match under coach Prandelli, a Stoke City player committed a bad foul on him and his knee “exploded”. The season ended before it began and his possibilities of recovery were dubious for many months. At the end of the season, Tommasi’s contract with Rome expires and the team wants to be sure that he has completely recovered before signing him up. The player also has some doubts on his career because he is not too sure that at age 31 he can be a part of the future program set up by coach Spalletti and the Rome Club. The two parties meet a couple of times, but the gossip around is that there will be a divorce. But then there is a surprise ending; Damiano Tommasi demonstrates on the pitch and through medical tests that he is physically fit; Rome offers him a new contract but he doesn’t want to become a part of the team at such high prices following months of inactivity, so he asks for the minimum union wage which is €1,500.00 a month.

Feel free to keep in the back of your mind his endless charitable work and status as the perfect teammate, but this is sufficient enough for now. Tommasi is, in short, a good man.

So how does this relate to Emmanuel Adebayor? Well, he also had the chance to do something good and decent recently, but chose to head in the opposite direction.

There was a rift between the Togo players and the Togo footballing federation after it was learned their president, Tata Avlessi Adagio de Mass, would not be traveling with the team for their fixture against Zambia today. The rest of the teammates were eventually fine with this after learning of his reasoning, but Adebayor was not. He was convinced the plane was going to crash (due to rumors) and, in his words, “My life is very dear to me and, if we have to go down, we’ll all go down together with the president.”

The reasoning the president can’t travel? He has to attend his mother’s funeral.

I understand the fear of flying, it’s incredibly prevalent and understandable, particularly after a helicopter transporting Togo football officials crash and killed those on board. And it would be one thing if he’d refused to fly altogether, but the fact that he was willing to die if someone would die with him? Absolutely unconscionable.

As you may have figured out at this point, the plane did not crash. And the Togo national football team lost 1-0 to Zambia today without their best player. A player only willing to risk his life if another man who’d lost someone incredibly close to him would risk his life too.

At least we can be thankful that for every Adebayor, of which there are many, there is a Damiano Tommasi to show us that’s not all bad. Occasionally good, even.

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://www.runofplay.com Brian

He didn’t want to get on a plane he thought would crash. Maybe “biggest asshole alive” is a kind of an overstatement?
Django

Eh
http://roma.theoffside.com chris

His point wasn’t about the plane crashing, which is completely understandable. Its that he would have flown had the president “risked his life also”. That puts it into an entirely different perspective.
Kelly

dont really think this qualifies him for biggest asshole alive…
Nolan

Top 10 maybe, but he’s no Robinho
http://italy.worldcupblog.com Chris

Then maybe it’s just me, but to pull a stunt like this while the president has other much more pressing concerns goes far beyond primadonna status. I don’t get the ultimatum “if he goes, I go”. Because Adebayor is such a bonus to their team it puts undue pressure on a grieving man. Unbelievably selfish.

Then again I also had someone incredibly close to me pass away relatively recently. Perhaps I’m seeing it from that perspective.
http://hertha.theoffside.com Abby

I think I agree with the other commenters- it may have been somewhat dickish, but there’s clearly something else going on here that made him suspicious about the flight. It’s hard to really pass judgment without knowing more details about both what’s going on in the Togolese federation and why Adebayor was so convinced that the plane would crash without the president on board.
james

this is a ridiculous article. Adebayor would only not fly without the president because he knows that if there was a suspected plot it is more likely to happen without the president on board. hence why the other players had to be ‘convinced’ to fly as well. i wouldnt have got on that plane even with the president if i had heard of a plot. In africa you read about planes with politicials etc going down all the time in retaliation for various quarrels and if i heard of a plot against a plane i was going to get on i certainly would be very worried and would use any excuse possible to avoid getting on it. Im not an arsenal fan and have no particular like/dislike of adebeyor so I am struggling to understand the mentality of the author of this article. absolutely ridiculous comments.
http://tunisia.worldcupblog.org/ Rami

I think something that should have been added to this article is that this wasn’t just some random fixture against Zambia. It’s combined African Cup and World Cup qualification and Togo’s loss in Zambia means that they’re essentially not going to go through to the final round of qualifiers (they need a lot of things to go their way and none of them look too likely). So Adebayor’s refusal to fly basically penalized an entire country. Two years of international no mans land isn’t what the Togolese people want or deserve. It’s true we don’t know all the details but to me Adebayor made a bizarre decision.
sandrahn

Chris, you’re thoroughly misinformed. The president’s mother died TWO YEARS AGO. The event he was going to was supposedly a memorial for her. Adebayor was the subject of death threats last year because of his protests/demands on behalf of his teammates for promised wages and other benefits that the national federation had reneged on. His teammates appreciate him using his high profile status on their behalf — risking actual death threats in the process. Ade was not convinced of the authenticity of the reason behind the president’s sudden pull out from the flight. There are good reasons for Ade to feel nervous under the circumstances.
Bobby_digital

Good points Sandrahn^^^….. and plus the quality of planes and flying in africa isnt the greatest… so if he had his doubts due to this fact as well, he did what he thought was best…. dont be so quick to judge chris.. you’re coming as a lil bit of an asshole yourself…. doesnt sound very fair, does it now?
JJGOGO

There’s definitely more to the story thanthe simple quote. There may well be more to the quote itself! It has been published over the past few months that there is osme bad blood between the Togo team members and the adminstrators, so again, much more to it than we may ever know or care to.
Oliviero Borgna

i only have a simple logical question for Adebayor, if the president of togo had a suspicion about someone trying to kill those aboard the plane don’t you think he would have notified the players? and don’t you think he might have been able to provide for alternate transportation?
Arsen Wenger

I hate Addi!!! eh eh a bo bo