In August 2008, English newspaper reported that Emmanuel Adebayor signed a new contract with Arsenal FC for si40,000 a week, which is more than S7m a year However, like most Africans in the modern game, Adebayor was born and rased in a desperately poor family He grew up in a rundown house in a poor suburb of the Togolese capital, Lome His mother sold dried fish at the border with Ghana, earning barely enough to feed the family and struggled t buy the promising athlete his first pair of soccer boots The family was so poor that he was once left in hospital for seven days because his parents could not afford to pay for the treatment Adebayor once told a journalist, "I put in a lot of hard work to be where I am today, but l will never forget what it was like when I was young, Life was very difficult, and I told myself that only had one chance to survive and that was to be a soccer player