The retirement from international football of Emmanuel Adebayor has put a stark spotlight again on the controversial decision to ban Togo from international football for the next four years in the wake of a deadly attack on their team bus before January's African Nations Cup finals.

Adebayor's retirement comes also as a potential blow to the marketability of African football's top tournament, whose revenues have grown markedly on the back of the profile of top stars like the Togo striker.

The Manchester City striker on Monday announced his intention to end a decade-long international career, citing the horror of the Cabinda attack on Jan. 8 in which separatists sprayed the Togo bus with bullets for some 20 minutes, killing two delegation members and seriously wounding their reserve goalkeeper.

Banned for next two Nations Cup

A traumatized Togo team were subsequently banned from the next two Nations Cup for departing the tournament in Angola prematurely, a decision that has earned the Confederation of African Football widespread ridicule.

The ban is being appealed by Togo and is expected to heard by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport in the coming weeks.

Images of a sobbing Adebayor taken just hours after the attack in the Angolan enclave were shown worldwide and, as Togo captain, he took a lead role in the discussions that followed on whether Togo would go ahead and compete at the Nations Cup.

"I have weighed up my feelings in the weeks and months since the attack and I am still haunted by the events which I witnessed on that horrible afternoon on the Togo team bus," Adebayor said in a statement released by his club on Monday.

"It is a moment I will never forget and one I never want to experience again."

Adebayor's decision increases pressure on CAF to rethink its ban, widely condemned for its insensitivity. African football's governing body claimed Togo's prime minister ordered Adebayor and his teammates home after the attack, when the players were prepared to go ahead and compete in Angola, and therefore unwanted government interference necessitated a statutory four-year ban.

Ghana president John Atta Mills made a personal appeal at last month's CAF awards in Accra for the ban to be lifted and a similar resolution was taken by heads of states of ECOWAS, the economic grouping of west African countries.

CAF standing its ground

But to date CAF have stood their ground, leaving Togo out of the recent draw for the 2012 Nations Cup preliminaries. Adebayor has been highly critical of CAF and is the latest high profile African star to question the leadership of the African game.

Didier Drogba had previously had a run-in with CAF over the African Footballer of the Year accolade he should have won in 2008 but had taken away from him because he did not attend the award ceremony.

The flexing of muscle by players is a new phenomenon for the African game where officials have had an almost dictatorial reign over decades. The emergence of highly paid world stars such as Adebayor and Drogba is changing the balance of power.

CAF is growing is increasingly dependant on their world wide appeal as its showpiece Nations Cup, from which derives it some 80 per cent of total revenue, attracts increased television and marketing revenues because of their participation.

A new deal for the next eight years of Nations Cup coverage is worth almost 100 million British pounds.

But if more join Adebayor on the sidelines then there is the real danger the Nations Cup will quickly lose its lustre.