Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 28 June 2008 / Leave a comment

Our diarist is in need of fourty winks after a hectic tournament. Catch up with him on the last leg of his European voyage.

"Sleep no more! Euro 2008 hath murdered sleep!" I'm sure every journalist here now is looking forward to nothing more than eight good solid hours of "innocent sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care", but we all know it isn't going to happen. Yesterday should have been a day for getting work out of the way, of clearing the decks for the weekend, but events have a habit of intervening.

First, there was an Adidas event at which Emmanuel Adebayor was put up to speak to the media. As was Diego, the Werder Bremen midfielder, who was cast very much in the role of spare part. The British media were out in force trying to get to the bottom of the rumours linking Adebayor with a move to AC Milan, and so too were the Italian media. The result was an inevitable farce, as Adidas tried to interest everybody in something other than the transfer and everybody tried to turn the conversation back to Adebayor's future.

The Dutch Adidas rep asked a series of bland questions, then turned to the floor for questions. First up, as ever, was Pierluigi from Sky Italia, a giant of a man I first encountered expressing his views on Sven-Goran Eriksson rather forcibly not realising he was sitting next to Eriksson's agent, Athole Still. Not that that's the sort of thing to faze him. "Emmanuel," he began, "we've seen both the finalists at this tournament have had their success wearing Adidas shirts." This seemed odd; had Pierluigi gone native? But then he twisted back. "Would you like to wear an Adidas shirt next season? Maybe a red and black one?"

There was laughter at his cleverness, even from Adebayor, who then dead-batted. So Bryan from our Sky picked up the chase. "What," he asked bluntly, "do you think of AC Milan's very public pursuit of you this summer?" And so the game went on. For what it's worth, I rather got the impression that he was leaving. He did say at one point, "I have three more years contract so no matter what I have to stay. I'm staying at Arsenal", but the general tone was valedictory.

Why else would he bother to insist quite so forcefully that players don't necessarily leave clubs just for financial reasons? "Sometimes," he said, you just need a change of atmosphere." A little later, he gave a smaller briefing to the written media. "I had a dream of playing for Arsenal, and Arsenal are one of the loveliest clubs in the world," he said. "When I go back to Africa it is obvious that a lot of people love the club. But now I have a chance of playing with one of the biggest clubs in the world. I haven't had a chance to speak to the manager yet. But we will sit down next week and decide what is good for my career. But, as you know better than anyone, a lot of teams want me to play for them. It will not be a difficult decision. I'm just going to sit down with my agent and with my family and decide what is good for my career." Although he insists he's not doing it for the money, you do wonder just how big an impact Arsenal's wage structure could have this summer.

Still, there was time to make a start on the weekend work, but then came a call from a British newspaper to help them out with a 900-word feature on a subject about which I knew next to nothing. And so went the afternoon and the early evening. Yesterday was a day of running very hard just to stand still, and at the end of it, all I have to show for my efforts is a vague sense Adebayor will probably leave Arsenal and the knowledge that Philipp Lahm is nice but dull and fronts an anti-speed campaign in Germany. Given the option, I'd have taken sleep.

Tags: Emmanuel Adebayor, Euro 2008 Betting, Euro 2008 Diary, Football Betting, Jonathan Wilson