Lessons from the tragic story of Emmanuelle Eboue

Eboue with his ex-wife [Photo: Courtesy]

This is a tale of two Ivorian footballers - Emmanuelle Eboue and Didier Drogba. Both played for two huge London football clubs in the exact same period - from the mid oh-ohs to the early part of this decade - which meant each Ivorian earned tens of thousands of Sterling pounds, weekly, for an average eight years. It means they should both have been shilling billionaires by the end of their respective tenures in Arsenal and Chelsea FC, right? Right!

But while Didier Drogba is now not just the second largest investor in mines in the Ivory Coast (not to mention being the part-owner of two MLS soccer teams in North America) and so worth about USD100 million (Sh10 billion), Eboue’s story is one of ‘woiye’ (pity). Eboue, after an acrimonious divorce from his white wife where the judge awarded her even his mansion in Enfield, is now bitter and bankrupt. He hides in the empty mansion with the electricity off, scared of bailiffs coming to evict him.