Nigeria Content Online

A record fourth
African Footballer of the Year award entitles Samuel Eto’o the right to
claim to be the continent’s best-ever player but it is a title that
sits uncomfortably with the Cameroonian.

The 29-year-old
Inter Milan striker crowned a year of unprecedented club success with
the award, handed to him in Cairo on Monday as he finished ahead of
perennial rival Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast and Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan
in the polling.

The Cameroon
captain has now achieved more honours and won more major medals than
any other of the continent’s players but is reluctant to accept he
might be Africa’s best ever.

“That would be
impossible to say. To win the Footballer of the Year four times is to
create a new record but I don’t think it gives me the right to say I am
the best,” he told Reuters in Cairo after accepting his award.

“There were greats
in previous generations who had different challenges and situations to
me. You can’t really compare the times.

“Now there are
youngsters who are climbing the ladder of success behind me and who are
coming up really fast. Who is to say who the best is?” But there is a
case to be made that Eto’o’s achievements are unsurpassed by any of the
other top footballers to emerge from Africa.

Accolades

Monday’s award beat Abedi Pele’s trio of successive African Footballer of the Year accolades in the early 1990s.

At international
level, Eto’o has competed at three World Cup finals, captaining his
country at this year’s tournament in South Africa.

He has won the
African Nations Cup twice and 18 goals in six finals tournaments is a
record that will be tough to overcome. He also won an Olympic gold
medal in 2000.

But it is at club
level where he has excelled. Moving to Spain as a teenager and
determinedly working his way through the difficulties of adapting to
new conditions and bouts of racism to go on and prove to be one of the
finest strikers in Europe.

At Barcelona, he
won two UEFA Champions League winners medals and scored in both the
2006 and 2009 finals, and was victorious again in May’s final with new
club Inter Milan. With both teams he won domestic league and cup
honours too.

The baby-faced Eto’o’s exceptional speed and finishing ability have set him apart from many of his contemporaries.

His achievements
overshadow a gallery of legends, the likes of Mozambican-born Eusebio,
who played in four European Cup finals but won just once, Roger Milla,
who was named the best African player of the last century and Abedi
Pele, who won club honours but never qualified with his country for the
World Cup.

Eto’o’s
achievements also easily outshine current rival Drogba but he must
still match the 1995 achievement of Liberian George Weah, the only
African ever crowned World Player of the Year.

“These honours are
not something that you seek out but when they come they give great
pleasure. And they motivate too,” Eto’o said.

REUTERS