Adebayor Celebration: Incitement Indictment

After a ninety yard sprint, fuelled by hatred and loathing, Ade­bayor slid on his knees all the way into a dou­ble charge of vio­lent con­duct and improper con­duct soon to be arbi­trated at the mercy of the Foot­ball Association.

An epic encounter of two con­trast­ing foot­ball val­ues was swept aside as legal wran­gling; blame shift­ing and cathar­tic apol­o­gis­ing soiled the head­lines where foot­ball should have glowed.

But was Ade­bayor wrong?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/m/man_city/8263504.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philmcnulty/2009/09/adebayor_mars_man_city_win.html

Now, I’m not priv­i­leged enough to have the detailed story of what exactly went on in that Arse­nal dress­ing room behind the cha­rade of rumour and gos­sip.  But some­thing of some almighty sig­nif­i­cance must have occurred last sea­son for Arse­nal to so will­ingly con­sent to the depar­tures of Touré and Ade­bayor.  Both were, and con­tinue to be, aston­ish­ingly good Pre­mier­ship play­ers with world class cre­den­tials.  To allow such tal­ent to leave given the rather frag­ile Achilles of an already crip­pled Arse­nal team sus­pects of a provoca­tive fiasco.

The story is an intrigu­ing one.  Ten­ta­tive reports sug­gest that Ade­bayor took explicit and evi­dent dis­plea­sure to the rather impu­dent and frankly dis­re­spect­ful con­duct of some of the more priv­i­leged yet still juve­nile con­tin­gent of an emerg­ing Arse­nal.  Despite being any­thing but estab­lished in the first team, the likes of Nick­las Bendt­ner, who seems to be the main antag­o­nist in this marred nar­ra­tive, allegedly dis­played con­sis­tent inso­lence towards the ubiq­ui­tous club rules and flaunted a wider dis­cour­tesy above their advan­taged stand­ing.  Rules and reg­u­la­tions are an adhe­sive of soci­ety and for the wel­fare to be con­tin­ued none are beyond reproach…regardless of salary, impor­tance or conceit.

Teenage petu­lance buoyed by inflated opin­ion lead to a con­stant flirt­ing with the bound­ary and an unnec­es­sary antag­o­nism of those who appre­ci­ate a more mature com­pre­hen­sion of the club pol­icy.  It sounds almost irrel­e­vant, but no train­ing shoes were to be per­mit­ted in spe­cific areas of the Arse­nal dress­ing room and non-compliance to the man­date was deemed sub­or­di­nate and sub­mis­sive.  The relent­less dis­obe­di­ence inspired Ade­bayor to respond against Bendt­ner with a ver­bal con­dem­na­tion lead­ing to phys­i­cal appraisal.

Despite Adebayor’s moti­va­tion seem­ingly car­ry­ing great integrity the dress­ing room pop­u­lar­ity votes sided on the wrong side.  Adebayor’s affir­ma­tive action appeared to alien­ate him­self from his team mates and dis­tance him­self from the core of the side.  It seems that no one at the club was pre­pared to sup­port Ade­bayor in his cru­sade against the mis­be­hav­iour and his detach­ment from that core just widened.  Dis­il­lu­sioned and iso­lated it was inevitable that Adebayor’s on field con­tri­bu­tions were to dimin­ish beyond the point of replacement.

How­ever, par­al­lel to this deba­cle the expec­ta­tion of the Emi­rates crowd remained unful­filled and Ade­bayor became the stooge blamed for an entire club’s inabil­ity to win enough games or to win enough games in the cor­rect man­ner.  As a non Arse­nal sup­porter look­ing in on affairs from the out­side, I could not quite fathom just why the ter­races were so com­mit­ted to the estrange­ment of Ade­bayor from their ranks.  The guy is absolute class with all the good attrib­utes of Didier Drogba com­pli­mented by a wiz­ardry not white­ness since Kanu.  Defend­ers can usu­ally accom­mo­date one facet of an accom­plished striker, but to deal with an entire armoury of poten­tial weapons, such as those at the com­mand of Ade­bayor, fre­quently proves illu­sive.  To allow that abil­ity to walk away was neg­li­gent.  To allow that abil­ity to walk away and into the first team of their most imme­di­ate adver­sary of Pre­mier­ship qual­i­fi­ca­tion into the Cham­pi­ons League was just plain stupid.

Hav­ing said that, the Arse­nal har­mony does seem to have taken a sig­nif­i­cant and impor­tant turn for the bet­ter this sea­son.  And so while the goals will surely be missed the ben­e­fit to the Arse­nal team must take the high­est prece­dent.  Per­haps the fac­tions of vile Arse­nal sup­port who con­tinue to deride Ade­bayor will be con­tent with his depar­ture irre­spec­tive of his scor­ing poten­tial against them.

I don’t quite under­stand how such a futile dis­agree­ment could con­clude in such an obnox­ious and destruc­tive way.  The legacy of this debate is mas­sive and the reper­cus­sions I feel are far from assumed.

It was more than inevitable that Ade­bayor would score in the early sea­son encounter; I would be sur­prised if they were even tak­ing bets on such a pre­dictable sce­nario.  It was less pre­dictable how­ever, that Man­ches­ter City might actu­ally run out win­ners.  It was pos­si­ble, but far from pre­dictable.  What was also pre­dictable was that when Ade­bayor did score the inevitable goal his erup­tion of human emo­tion would be forth­com­ing, how could it not be?

Any scorned or betrayed pas­sion must feel jus­ti­fied when a deci­sive and com­pelling retort can fatally deliver a ter­mi­na­tion to the con­ver­sa­tion.  To abol­ish any pre­vi­ous argu­ment or to ren­der any sub­se­quent ques­tion as redun­dant is a per­sua­sive van­tage and this supremacy can skew integrity to beyond the point of accep­tance.  The volatil­ity ampli­fies when you punc­tu­ate or flavour the potion with the inflam­ma­tory per­cep­tion that Ade­bayor con­tin­ues to feel he was cor­rect and jus­ti­fied to hold his stand­point so sto­ically and he feels deceived and mis­rep­re­sented by an indig­nant Arse­nal fam­ily.  It goes some way to under­stand­ing, if never quite con­don­ing, the behav­iour that man­i­fested in a marathon sprint designed only to antag­o­nise the lost con­fi­dence now proved flawed.

What Ade­bayor did was wrong.  To goad oppo­si­tion fans to beyond the point of riotous behav­iour was unac­cept­able, and the fact that inno­cent stew­ards and sta­dium staff were com­pro­mised and injured adds weight to the dis­ci­pli­nary con­tention.  But hav­ing said that, I totally recog­nised where Ade­bayor found the neces­sity to con­duct him­self in such a man­ner.  Given the para­me­ters and injus­tice of his story I feel that I too would have felt it nec­es­sary, if not accept­able, to behave with such emo­tion.  I too would have swal­lowed what­ever con­se­quence or reper­cus­sions were required in order to voice my opin­ion or to express my side of the debate.

It was an unadul­ter­ated expres­sion of jus­tice and a very nat­ural human response.  Very few recog­nise exactly what val­ues that moment represents.

I’ve heard many con­demn the behav­iour of Ade­bayor and yet I’ve heard very few ratio­nal, accu­rate appraisals.  Most seem to con­tra­dict their own argu­ment.  Some ref­er­enc­ing that …they’re all just dumb foot­ballers dirt­ied by money and beyond the hon­our of com­mon soci­ety, who have lit­tle recog­ni­tion of their worth or influ­ence.  Behav­iour like this is now expected if still not accept­able.  The same argu­ments carry on con­tra­dict­ing that …given their inflated earn­ing and height­ened sta­tus foot­ball celebri­ties should be edu­cated against these acts of attri­tion.  Bizarre.  Too rich to know bet­ter.   And yet so rich they should know better.

The clichéd response from the infu­ri­ated foot­ball com­mu­nity is that the crowd pay their sea­son ticket mon­eys and so they’re lib­er­ated and jus­ti­fied to voice their opin­ion, no mat­ter how abu­sive, no mat­ter how unfounded or no mat­ter how wrong.  Why does this same sen­ti­ment not equally and con­versely uphold for Ade­bayor.  The behav­iour of the Arse­nal sup­port towards Ade­bayor, lin­gered over many months, deserves no com­pas­sion at all.  The con­duct of the Arse­nal sup­port imme­di­ately after Adebayor’s inflam­ma­tory cel­e­bra­tion was obnox­ious, no mat­ter whether they were incited or not.  I’m not sure how sta­tus, wages, or num­bers should be treated any different.

Ade­bayor has no forum with which to rep­re­sent his opin­ion.  He can score win­ning goals against Arse­nal, but they carry only revenge, they don’t carry the truth.  There is no gen­uine method to rep­re­sent his griev­ing.  Other than what he did.

From The Writ­ings Of Jonny Carter

www.JonnyCarter.com