Yado Mambo and the Ebbsfleet United No5 shirt offered a reminder of how the shirt number a player wears can affect how they are perceived
If the evidence presented in the opening week of the US Justice Department’s Fifa corruption trial was not grim enough, the recent sight of a footballer named Mambo not wearing No5 provided further evidence that the game is to all intents and purposes “gone”. During a televised National League match between his side and Leyton Orient, the Ebbsfleet United central defender Yado Mambo became an unlikely social media talking point when viewers noticed the 26-year-old’s club had missed a trick by failing to allocate him the obvious digit as an homage to that 1999 Lou Bega smash‑hit dancefloor filler. “Imagine signing a player called Mambo and not giving him the No5 shirt,” mused one Twitter user under a screengrab of Mambo wearing No18. “Poor form from Ebbsfleet United.”
Speaking to Radio Kent at the height of his Warholian 15 minutes, Mambo revealed that he had in fact requested the shirt number in question before the season started, but had been turned down by spoilsport Ebbsfleet manager, Daryl McMahon. “I told my gaffer the same thing, but I don’t think he believed me until over this weekend, when it has just blown up all over social media,” he said. “Maybe now he’ll take it a bit more seriously and change the numbers next season. [Mambo No5] was one of my favourite songs at that age. At school a lot of kids used to sing it to me.”
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