Why Spurs are glad to be shot of Adebayor
DUrInG Emmanuel adebayor’s exit negotiations from Tottenham, Daniel Levy asked the Togolese striker if there was anything he could do to help, or if he had a preference on his next club.
‘Yes — real Madrid or Chelsea,’ adebayor would reply, with a huge smile on his face.
Otherwise, the forward made it clear that he was quite happy to report for training with Ugo Ehiogu’s Under 21 development squad for the remaining year of his £100,000-a-week contract.
Tottenham’s chairman had something very different in mind, with more realistic offers from aston Villa and West Ham on the table as they discussed a severance package to end his disastrous, threeyear spell at White Hart Lane.
adebayor (below) is one tricky customer and Levy should have known better than to make his first offer of £1million net to sever his ties with the club before the transfer window closed on september 1.
That would have enabled the 31-year-old striker the opportunity to resume a playing career that came grinding to a halt after his embarrassing performance at Villa Park on november 2, 2014.
That was adebayor’s last start in the Barclays Premier League, where he was dragged off in the 58th minute after one of the most uninterested, listless appearances of his professional career. He is in a far better place now, particularly after Levy agreed to pay the striker the bulk of the £5m salary that he was entitled to earn over the remaining 12 months of his contract.
adebayor has signed a nondisclosure agreement, which means the secrets of his largely unsuccessful spell at White Hart Lane are unlikely to spill out until Levy has paid him the final penny due.
sensibly, the spurs chairman is paying the striker in stages, dripfeeding him in instalments to make sure that he sticks to the agreement signed earlier this week.
It had to come to this because adebayor was beginning to get on the nerves of staff at the training ground by telling them that ‘life is good’ whenever he passed them by.
although he was no longer involved with the first team he had taken to being chauffeured from his north London home into Tottenham’s new training facility in Enfield.
some days his custom-built rollsroyce Phantom Drophead Coupe (on the road price £400,000, plus trimmings) took his fancy. On others he would emerge from the back of a souped-up Mercedes G wagon (£88,000, plus extras). Either way, no-one at Tottenham’s training ground had seen him drive in about a year.
He had fulfilled his contractual obligations by reporting for training each day, opting to work with the development squads when Mauricio Pochettino confirmed that he would never play for the first team again. aaron Lennon, another outcast, also trained with the Under 21 team, helping to pass on some of his experience as a senior professional to the young players while he waited for Everton to reach an agreement with Levy.
adebayor saw it a little differently, at times openly showing his dissatisfaction with sessions that are designed to improve young players and turn them into firstteam potential.
Once the moves to aston Villa and West Ham had predictably fallen through, the presence of a £ 100,000- a- week striker at the training ground for the next eight months was likely to have a negative impact on the club. although Tottenham have released his registration, the only way adebayor can sign for another club before January is via a successful appeal to FIFA.
He can cite ‘sporting reasons’, making a case that a player who has only made six, fleeting appearances as a substitute since that game at Villa Park in november 2014 is entitled to start over.
no- one has ever questioned adebayor’s talent and his goal in the Champions League for former club arsenal against Villarreal in 2009 is one of the best in the competition’s history.
Eventually someone will take him on again, convincing themselves that they can get half a season or more out of him at the highest level.
as ever, there will be a heavy price to pay for it.