While the big football leagues and cups around the world reach their season climax and take most of the football and sporting headlines, as ever the best story in football this week is down a few divisions in our opinion, as cult football hero Adebayo Akinfenwa farewells football in the League Playoff Final.
And what a stage to say goodbye to football, the hallowed turf of Wembley, against a Sunderland team who will no doubt fill half the stadium. If Wycombe Wanderers open their ticket allotment up to wellwishers of Akinfenwa aka The Beast they’d easily fill the other half, If Wycombe aren’t already.
The big game in question is the often ignored, third tier League One playoff final. It’s no 100 million dollar game like the Championship playoff on the same weekend, but for Adebayo Akinfenwa fans and friends it is priceless – one last chance to see the big man in action.
Maybe you’ve barely heard of Adebayo Akinfenwa, or are unaware of this website’s love for the man we called our favourite footballer of all time. He was nominated for our Person of the Year twice. Not bad going for an obscure sports website coming out of a lounge room in Australia. And we’re not even Wycombe fans by birth, sadly our team is a former EPL-Championship side that finished just below Wycombe this season. But we’ve always followed the big man, because he brings big joy.
He’s no recent flash in the pan, hard to be at 40, but he has been around for a long time in the lower reaches of the Football League playing for 11 different football league clubs for nearly 700 games and over 200 goals.
The forward has always been popular, but there has been something magic about his linking up with minnows Wycombe Wanderers that has seen both prosper and becoming more popular, bringing joy to player, club and fans. For the club Wycombe they have risen from the fourth tier to the Championship against the odds as one of the Football League’s smallest clubs, and now are attempting to do it again, and for the man they call The Beast a chance to prove he was worthy of more after being told he wasn’t.
This weekend’s final is just shy of six years since Adebayo Akinfenwa scored a penalty for AFC Wimbledon in their 2016 League Two playoff win, and was looking for work afterwards having been told he was cut for the next season. Essentially told he wasn’t good enough for the third tier. How wrong that would be. Coincidentally, AFC Wimbledon’s great run in the third tier ended just this season as they were relegated back to the fourth division.
Below is the video of the infamous post match interview, and a better one to come in a years time.
For the record, the moment of debate over the penalty in that final he was talking about in the video is below. And funny.
Of course after moving on from Wimbledon, managers did indeed hit him up on What’s App, which eventually saw Adebayo end up playing for Wycombe Wanderers, then in the fourth division. His stint at the Chairboys is his longest stint at any club in total, six seasons, which has seen a promotion into the third tier, and a surprise League One Playoff final win two seasons ago which saw both player and club in the second tier for the first time.
He gained a lot of wider notoriety after their playoff win two years ago, with has been described by many as the greatest post match interview of all time. We agree.
Despite relegation, Wycombe and Adebayo Akinfenwa remained popular. Especially since Akinfenwa announced he was retiring after this season. Social media involving the Beast has many stories recently about him hanging around after games to catch up with fans from home or away. If would be almost impossible to find a footballer so universally loved around the game. No matter which club the people support, there has been unlimited love for Adebayo Akinfenwa this season.
He’s a team player, and an entertainment machine when he’s on the field, and usually good for post celebration as the below has some of Wycombe’s best.
But interviews and dance moves aside, he was and still is a great player. Sure the goals and playing minutes have dried up, but bloody hell, the man just turned 40.
Our favourite moments (winning playoff finals aside) was when Adebayo Akinfenwa’s clubs drew Premier League opposition in the FA Cup.
Two memories stick in the mind. The first was The Beast scoring against Liverpool in the FA Cup for AFC Wimbledon. But not only the goal, he terrorised the Premier League team’s defense all game, and gave them a thoroughly difficult night.
The second was when Wycombe played Spurs in the FA Cup a few years back. Adebayo and friends pushed Tottenham so hard that day that needed to bring on no less than Kane, Son and score goals in the 89th and 90 + 7th minute just to overhaul Wycombe’s bold lead.
Interestingly, Akinfenwa follows Liverpool, and Jurgen Klopp did indeed get in touch as mentioned in the best post match interview ever.
His personality though is what people are drawn to, and you simply never hear a bad word about him from anyone. Team mates, fans, opposition fans, people just love the big man.
Some have said he was too big for football or he was not good enough for a certain division, but his two decade-long career has been a magnificent “up yours” to anyone who told him he couldn’t do something. Not that he would say “up yours” himself, he’s too much of a man of the people. And for sure an example for others to look up to.
So Wycombe have a second chance in three years to be promoted to the Championship, a super effort given the other clubs in the third tier this season include big clubs like NetFlix heroes Sunderland, the world’s most vanilla team Ipswich Town and other big fallen giants like Sheffield Wednesday. Only one of those big clubs could go up this season, and if Wycombe win on Saturday, again the big name clubs have been beaten by better teams. And Adebayo Akinfenwa has had a large part in shaping the culture of a team as small as Wycombe allowing them to prove doubters wrong, like he has all career.
Before moving on from Netflix, they could have spent a little money on having a Sunderland-type documentary on Adebayo Akinfenwa’s last season. Bayo’s Last Dance or something similar. Surely good enough for Michael Jordan, good enough for a man called The Beast.
His last dance finishes at Wembley this Saturday, which will hopefully end in victory for Wycombe, and another great post match interview. They’re a chance given Sunderland’s poor record in big finals at Wembley.
He deserves no less than to taste victory one last time, and you should tune in for your last glimpse of the man.
So we say salute The Beast, and say goodbye to our favourite footballer of all time, any division, any era. Football will be that little bit less fun without him around.
