Spoiler

Making Vagner Love cry and being pictured with a wanted drugs baron – all in a week’s work for Adriano

Brazilian striker waddles from one controversy to another

Brazilian striker Adriano wrapped up a deal with Roma this week, bringing to an end his year-long self-imposed exile from European football.

Like compatriots Ronaldo and Robinho, the perennially troubled striker decided a move back home was necessary to clear his head and prevent his career being drowned by continual scandal.

Ironically, it looks like he’ll be coming back caught up in more controversy than when he left.

Adriano, a.k.a. ‘The Emperor’, signed for his childhood club Flamengo in May last year, a month after mutually terminating his contract with Inter Milan. He was joined this January by fellow Brazilian Vagner Love, brought in on loan from CSKA Moscow.

Both boyhood Flamengo fans, the pair were brought together by one thing: a full-blooded, unswerving devotion to non, stop, partying, down; eventually forming a fearsome strike partnership – 27 goals in 18 games – the South American press dubbed “The Empire of Love” (latterly “The Empire of Cholesterol” (c) Universidad de Chile gaffer Gerardo Pelusso.)

However, things took a turn for the worse on Friday, when, according to one reporter at Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the pair “fought bitterly” at a leaving bash thrown at Adriano’s house “attended by many beautiful women and flowing rivers of beer”.

As you might expect from a clash between two of Brazilian football’s most legendary swordsman, the fight was over a girl – possibly Adriano’s new girlfriend Marcalla Marques (described as “having it all: brunette, long straight hair, the breasts, and top buttocks”), who organised the do – and ended with Adriano demanding the DJ stop the music while he kicked Love, by now allegedly in floods of tears, out of the house. The Empire of Love = officially fallen.

This Monday, the Emperor’s already shitty week took an absolute nosedive.

Local newspaper O Dia (how apt) printed pictures of the 28-year-old posing with Fabio Atanasio da Silva, one of the country’s most wanted drug barons. Throwing up gang signs. And holding an assault rifle. In a commendable attempt at damage limitation, Adriano’s people were at pains to assure everyone he was in fact gripping a paintball gun. And, despite it looking suspiciously like Saddam Hussein’s gold-plated AK47, da Silva had ‘a lamp stand’.

Noticing the tubby forward’s unusually svelte frame Brazilian police deduced the picture must have been taken during his time at Inter Milan. Adriano soon revealed the image relates to an alleged extortion attempt two years ago in which a gang of criminals demanded money to prevent it from surfacing.

Yesterday he was hauled up in court, accused of associating with da Silva and having ties to ‘Commando Vermelho’, Rio’s biggest drugs trafficking gang -  currently wanted for shooting down a police helicopter during a city gunfight.

State prosecutors have asked for access to both Adriano’s phone and banking records as well as answers over a $33,000 bank transaction they suspect may have found its way into da Silva’s hands.

Unsurprisingly, the striker has denied all accusations, but Brazilian media expect the scandal to carry on into the foreseeable future.

All The Spoiler will say is: Welcome back Adriano; it’s been boring without you.

• Adriano
• Brazil
• Flamengo
• Roma
• Vagner Love