Emmanuel Adebayor is in a bit of a pickle. He
plays for Manchester
City against Arsenal
tomorrow and is going to be given a torrid time by the visiting fans.
Gooners were delighted when Adebayor left
the club, after the striker was deemed to have stopped trying last season -
notably during the Champions League semi-final against Manchester United.
After joining City he has started
scoring goals again - and it has been said he has a point to prove when
Arsenal visit.
Normally, scoring a goal is the right way
to prove a point, but it depends on what exactly that point is.
If Adebayor finds the net tomorrow he will
have scored in four consecutive games, yet paradoxically he will have proved
the Gooners right - that he was useless last season because he was not trying.
If he wants to win the argument, Adebayor
should play like a drain - thereby proving that he is just not very good, and
capable of playing just as badly for Manchester
City as he did for
Arsenal. That'll show them.
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When
referee Alberto Undiano Mallenco blew the final whistle on Wednesday
night to confirm England's qualification for the World Cup, he might as well have been ringing an enormous cash register.
The World Cup can
mean big money for the host country, all the more so if England are involved.
It was a wise man who
called his stock broker on Thursday morning and bought shares in Castle Lager, Biltong
and Acme Plastic Breasts.
With thousands of fans
planning to make the trip to South
Africa, it should be like shooting fish in a
barrel for the country's leading
travel agencies.
Cue a press release from Thomas Cook
advertising package holidays including flights, accommodation and World Cup
tickets. It is a lazy traveller's
dream.
A lazy and fabulously rich traveller.
Because the prices are enough to make even the most well-off football fan want
to spend their summer staycationing at a Prestatyn caravan park.
And if Rio Ferdinand doesn't shake off his back injury, he could make it two
years on the trot
driving a go-kart around Presthaven Sands.
If you want to see just one England game,
Thomas Cook plan to relieve you of £2,499 for five nights'
accommodation and a ticket in the nosebleed seats.
Two games will cost you £3,650, while
£4,150 gets you three matches along with 17 nights in a three star hotel in the
Sandton district of Johannesburg, whose main claim to fame is hosting the 2008
Miss World contest.
Inevitably, Danny Talbot, managing director at Thomas
Cook Sport, said: "We're
anticipating that demand for our packages will be very
high."
As well as pricing the ubiquitous and yet somewhat mysterious 'ordinary fan' well out of the equation, it all seems a bit unnecessary.
For the price of the cheapest package, you
could get to Venice
and back on the Orient Express, or buy a Bang and Olufsen home entertainment
system so massive it is more realistic than attending matches in person.
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