One week on: reflections on the Togo bus attack

In a week where the weather has put pay to so many games in English football, it has been a testing time for other football nations as well. Whatever may have happened, or not happened, as is more appropriate, throughout the country, has been overshadowed by events at the African Nations Cup.

When I first heard of the gun attack on the Togo team, I did what I am sure many English football fans also did, and that was to listen out for the famous names in the Togo squad.  What of Emmanuel Adebayor, I thought, once I heard there had been fatalities.  Afterwards, I felt a pang of guilt that my initial concern was simply for the squad’s biggest name, and that only his fame had generated this emotion in me. 

It is ironic when I consider that, as a Chelsea fan, prior to the tournament my only trepidation was how The Blues would cope without so many of their star players for a few weeks.  Little did I anticipate that so many teams would come so close to losing their players forever.

Violence allied to football has always has always perplexed me.  It is never something that has interested me, and the only common link between the two which I can establish so far is the rush of testosterone, and a will to win, sometimes at any cost.  When footballers are killed simply because of who they are, things have gone too far.  

I will always remember from my childhood the murder of Andres Escobar at the 1994 World Cup.  To think he was shot for an own goal beggars belief.  There was insinuation that the goal resulted in large gambling losses to drug lords, and this was why he met his untimely demise. 

Many footballers are paid ludicrous money.  Some live the sort of lives your average person can only dream of.  Others have arrogance to match their riches, an unappealing trait if ever there was one.  But these people have made the lives they have due to a talent they were born with.  They are the chosen few.  Obviously, there will be jealousy in some quarters, and I can reason with this.  But these players are not murderers; they are not rapists, and they make an honest (if in some cases a preposterously affluent) living.

They (particularly the likes of Adebayor), offer inspiration to kids who have grown up in poverty, proving that a life of crime is not the only possibility open to them.  They offer entertainment and friendly rivalry to millions.  Above all, they are human, lest we forget.  Adebayor’s tears for his fallen friends prove footballers are capable of the same emotions we feel, which simply shows that if you remove their talent and wealth, they are just the same as the rest of us. 

I only hope that the Angolan gunmen who wreaked this havoc are remorseful; though I wouldn’t count on it. 

Mike Dicker