Former Barcelona and Inter Milan forward Samuel Eto’o has announced his retirement from football at the age of 38.
The three-time Champions League winner’s last club was Qatar SC, where he had been playing from 2018 and he retires as Cameroon’s leading goal scorer with 56.
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He announced his retirement on Instragram with a picture of himself alongside the words: “The end. Towards a new challenge. Thank you all, big love.”
Eto’o moved to Europe in 1997, when he was signed by Real Madrid. However, he was sent on loan three times and made just three senior appearances before joining Real Mallorca on a permanent deal in 2000.
Four years later, he moved to Barcelona, where he was part of one of the best attacks in the world alongside Ronaldinho, as the Catalans won back-to-back La Liga titles as well as the Champions League in 2006, where Eto’o scored the equaliser in a 2-1 final win over Arsenal in Paris.
Eto’o remained an important part of the Barca side in Pep Guardiola’s first season in management in 2008-09 and again scored in the Champions League final, this time in a 2-0 victory over Manchester United, to complete a Treble, having already won La Liga and the Copa del Rey.
That summer, he left to join Inter as part of a deal which saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic move to Camp Nou and Eto’o was part of another Treble-winning side — the only player in history to achieve this feat in consecutive years — and the third player to win back-to-back Champions League titles with two different clubs.
In 2011, he joined Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala, before moving to Chelsea for the 2013-14 season, where he was reunited with Jose Mourinho, his manager at Inter.
Eto’o spent the first half of the 2014-15 campaign at Everton before joining Sampdoria in January. At the end of the season, he moved to Turkish side Antalyaspor, where he spent three years. In 2017, he joined Konyaspor before finishing his career in Qatar.
He won two Africa Cup of Nations titles with Cameroon as well as the Olympic Gold Medal in 2000 and was voted the African Player of the Year on four occasions.