Samuel Eto'o Fils (French pronunciation:) (born 10 March 1981) is a Cameroonian professional footballer who plays as a striker for Italian Serie A club Internazionale. He is also the current captain of the Cameroon national team. Eto'o trained at Kadji Sports Academy. He also holds a Spanish passport, enabling him not to count among the "foreign players" working in the European Union.
Eto'o scored over 100 goals in five seasons with FC Barcelona, and is also the record holder in number of appearances by an African player in La Liga. In 2010, he became the first player to win two European Continental Trebles following his back-to-back achievements with Barcelona and Internazionale. He is the second player to have ever scored in two separate UEFA Champions League finals and the fourth player, after Marcel Desailly, Paulo Sousa, and Gerard Piqué, to have won the UEFA Champions League two years in a row with different teams. He is the most decorated African player of all time having won the African Player of the Year award a record four times in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2010.
As a member of the Cameroon national team, he was a part of the squad that won the 2000 Olympic tournament; he has participated in three World Cups and six African Nations Cups (being champion twice) and is the all-time leading scorer in the history of the African Nations Cup, with 18 goals. Eto is widely regarded as the one of the best African footballers in history.
Samuel Eto'o joined Real Madrid in 1997, but he could only train with Real Madrid B, as he was still a minor. Real Madrid B were relegated to the third tier, Segunda División B, where non-European Union players are not allowed, and as a result, he was loaned to second-division CD Leganés for the 1997–98 season, when he was only in the tenth grade. After making 30 appearances for the club and only scoring four goals, he returned to Madrid following the end of the 1998–99 season. In January 1999, he was loaned out to RCD Espanyol, but failed to make any appearances for the club
Eto'o departed Mallorca as the club's all-time leading domestic league scorer (54 goals) when he signed for FC Barcelona in the summer of 2004 for a transfer fee of €24 million, after lengthy, three-way negotiations with Mallorca and Madrid. Initially, Real Madrid President Florentino Pérez wanted to buy back the full transfer rights and loan him out again, but eventually the Barcelona deal proved lucrative enough to warrant a sale. Additionally, the team already had its full quota of three non-EU players.