Last Friday’s dreadful attack on the Togolese football team in Kabinda yet again demonstrated how sport can be exploited for political purposes by those with little interest in the game that they have chosen to target. For this reason alone, it was correct that the British media devoted so much time and space to the story.

However, had the individuals involved not had any connection to the United Kingdom and more particularly to top Premier League teams, it seems very doubtful that the event would have received so much attention.

The African Cup of Nations has existed since 1957 yet it is only during the past decade that the domestic media has picked this event up. Co-incidentally, it is during this time that a clutch of top and prodigiously talented African footballers have chosen either to ply their trade in the Premier League and Coca Cola Championship, or have been picked up by scouts and agents as precious talents in the hope that they will blossom like many of those players spotted by Arsenal football club.

To have had the iconic Emmanuel Adebayor as a central figure in the horrific bus attack meant that the story had a natural focus, yet there have been other instances when innocent lives have been lost or permanently scarred as a result of sport being manipulated for political ends. In cases such as the Dirty War in Argentina preceding the 1978 World Cup, the media’s attention was minimal. The fact that Scotland was the only Home country to qualify for the finals may well have contributed to this malaise