Chelsea striker is delighted by his reunion with former Inter Milan manager at Stamford Bridge and thinking positive about Cameroon’s World Cup play-off. By Ian Hawkey.
It is just after half-term in the club shop at Stamford Bridge, and a proud father is buying replica jerseys for his children. It is a hefty order. He asks for home and away shirts, bearing the forenames of each child, all four of them, aged between six and the early teens. The dad arranges to have them dispatched to his workplace, Chelsea’s Surrey training ground.
Because Samuel Eto’o arrived in London late in the transfer window, there have been things to catch up on, such as the children’s new blue tops, familiarising himself with a new leaague, and a language which Eto’o, who comes from the French-speaking part of Cameroon, has never needed to perfect until now. His first two months in the Premier League have left him, he says, “generally quite happy”, though he feels English football has not yet seen the best of him.
He, and Chelsea, would anticipate more goals, for a start. The most consistently brilliant centre-forward of the first decade of the 21st century is accustomed to accumulating more than one every five starts, his record so far for Chelsea. At Barcelona, he averaged three in every four La Liga games; at Inter Milan, a goal every other Serie A match; the same in Russia, from where Chelsea recruited him after two seasons with Anzhi Makhachkala.
But he gleefully points out he is already the owner of one significant milestone, thanks to his goal against Cardiff City. “I’m happy,” he smiles, “because, even coming in late, I was still the first of Chelsea’s strikers to score this season in the Premier League. That gave me a thrill.”
If that suggests a competitive edge to Eto’o’s relationship with Fernando Torres, whose celebrated return to form only yielded his first league goal six days ago, or Demba Ba, it is a healthy joust. He gladly praises Torres, adding only that the idea the Spaniard has suddenly happened on a renaissance is misguided.
“He has been playing well throughout,” says Eto’o. “The fact is, as all we strikers know, we tend to get judged just on the number of goals. It’s not all about the figures. It’s about how you play for the team, how you help your colleagues, how you work defensively. All that, he’s been doing very well, and the goals come in streaks. They flow for a while, then they go away for a bit.”
At Newcastle, Torres will probably start, thanks to his performance against Manchester City, and given that Eto’o got the nod for the first XI in midweek in the League Cup.
Rotation is inevitable “no one signs a contact saying they will always start,” he says but the bench is not Eto’o’s natural, long-term habitat, not unless you rewind 15 years, to his nights of teenaged frustration at Real Madrid, when scant opportunities to jump an illustrious queue of forwards left him miffed.
The drive that would carry him to landmark achievements after that, to a Copa del Rey win with Real Mallorca, to two Champions League titles and three La Ligas at Barça, and a treble at Jose Mourinho’s Inter, has its springboard in the perception he had been undervalued at Madrid.
It also comes from a stubborn streak, which Eto’o identifies in his own childhood, the subject of a book he has released, in a rare format for the sporting memoir: comic strip. It is illustrated by his talented compatriot Joëlle Esso, who he sought out because his own children grew up enjoying her work.
There are to be nine volumes, eventually, the first having concluded when the schoolboy Eto’o returns to Cameroon from Paris, where he had absconded from a junior football tour but had been denied the chance to sign for a French club because he had no residence permit. He touches down in Douala, his home town, ready to redouble his efforts to make a career at the top of the game.
“I stick at things, will always push myself hard, and little by little I’ll get to where I want to be,” says Eto’o. His first weeks at Chelsea exemplified that. “It can be complicated when you join after the season has begun, because your colleagues have already started implementing the manager’s ideas. I had to adapt to a new country, and a new league.”
The manager, of course, was familiar, the mutual admiration between Mourinho and Eto’o remains potent. If some senior Chelsea players, like Mourinho himself, see a distinct version of the Portuguese from his 2004 to 2007 Chelsea stint, so does Eto’o, though for different reasons: in the heat of several poisonous Chelsea v
t is just after half-term in the club shop at Stamford Bridge, and a proud father is buying replica jerseys for his children. It is a hefty order. He asks for home and away shirts, bearing the forenames of each child, all four of them, aged between six and the early teens. The dad arranges to have them dispatched to his workplace, Chelsea’s Surrey training ground.
Because Samuel Eto’o arrived in London late in the transfer window, there have been things to catch up on, such as the children’s new blue tops, familiarising himself with a new leaague, and a language which Eto’o, who comes from the French-speaking part of Cameroon, has never needed to perfect until now. His first two months in the Premier League have left him, he says, “generally quite happy”, though he feels English football has not yet seen the best of him.
He, and Chelsea, would anticipate more goals, for a start. The most consistently brilliant centre-forward of the first decade of the 21st century is accustomed to accumulating more than one every five starts, his record so far for Chelsea. At Barcelona, he averaged three in every four La Liga games; at Inter Milan, a goal every other Serie A match; the same in Russia, from where Chelsea recruited him after two seasons with Anzhi Makhachkala.
But he gleefully points out he is already the owner of one significant milestone, thanks to his goal against Cardiff City. “I’m happy,” he smiles, “because, even coming in late, I was still the first of Chelsea’s strikers to score this season in the Premier League. That gave me a thrill.”
If that suggests a competitive edge to Eto’o’s relationship with Fernando Torres, whose celebrated return to form only yielded his first league goal six days ago, or Demba Ba, it is a healthy joust. He gladly praises Torres, adding only that the idea the Spaniard has suddenly happened on a renaissance is misguided.
“He has been playing well throughout,” says Eto’o. “The fact is, as all we strikers know, we tend to get judged just on the number of goals. It’s not all about the figures. It’s about how you play for the team, how you help your colleagues, how you work defensively. All that, he’s been doing very well, and the goals come in streaks. They flow for a while, then they go away for a bit.”
At Newcastle, Torres will probably start, thanks to his performance against Manchester City, and given that Eto’o got the nod for the first XI in midweek in the League Cup.
Rotation is inevitable “no one signs a contact saying they will always start,” he says but the bench is not Eto’o’s natural, long-term habitat, not unless you rewind 15 years, to his nights of teenaged frustration at Real Madrid, when scant opportunities to jump an illustrious queue of forwards left him miffed.
The drive that would carry him to landmark achievements after that, to a Copa del Rey win with Real Mallorca, to two Champions League titles and three La Ligas at Barça, and a treble at Jose Mourinho’s Inter, has its springboard in the perception he had been undervalued at Madrid.
It also comes from a stubborn streak, which Eto’o identifies in his own childhood, the subject of a book he has released, in a rare format for the sporting memoir: comic strip. It is illustrated by his talented compatriot Joëlle Esso, who he sought out because his own children grew up enjoying her work.
There are to be nine volumes, eventually, the first having concluded when the schoolboy Eto’o returns to Cameroon from Paris, where he had absconded from a junior football tour but had been denied the chance to sign for a French club because he had no residence permit. He touches down in Douala, his home town, ready to redouble his efforts to make a career at the top of the game.
“I stick at things, will always push myself hard, and little by little I’ll get to where I want to be,” says Eto’o. His first weeks at Chelsea exemplified that. “It can be complicated when you join after the season has begun, because your colleagues have already started implementing the manager’s ideas. I had to adapt to a new country, and a new league.”
The manager, of course, was familiar, the mutual admiration between Mourinho and Eto’o remains potent. If some senior Chelsea players, like Mourinho himself, see a distinct version of the Portuguese from his 2004 to 2007 Chelsea stint, so does Eto’o, though for different reasons: in the heat of several poisonous Chelsea v
