The miracle that is Emmanuel Adebayor

Arsenal forward Emmanuel Adebayor has told how his mother was left praying for divine intervention when her son could not walk at the age of four - and claims it arrived in the form of a football in a church yard.

The Togo international was laying down in the grounds of a church his mother had turned to in her time of crisis when an errant ball landed near him and he was able to raise himself and give chase.

“I did not walk for the first four years of my life," says Adebayor. “My mum took me to Nigeria, Lagos, Ghana and all the villages in Africa but nothing happened. It got to the stage where they took me to a church and told my mum they’d pray for me for a week. They said that, if I did not walk by the end of that week, it meant I would never walk.



“It was a strange thing to say and you can understand why Mum was crying. They started praying at midnight on the Sunday. All the week, I’m not walking. By Saturday midnight my mum was all over the place, crying. For her, it was all over. She had taken me everywhere in Africa and nothing had worked.

“Anyway, I was in the church laying down and, around nine or ten o’clock on the Sunday morning, I could hear children playing outside. Suddenly somebody kicked a ball into the church. And the first person to stand up and run was me, because I wanted to get that ball.

“My mum was afraid because she had never even seen me walking and suddenly I was running after a ball. And all the people in the church who had been praying for me told my mum, ‘Your son is walking because of football. It must mean the boy has football in his blood.’ It’s an amazing story. But it is true. My mum has told me about it all my life.”