Former Chelsea striker Samuel Eto’o has revealed he was on the receiving end of racial discrimination after his local jewellers refused to sell him a £10,000 watch because they thought he was a Nigerian fraudster.
Eto’o, who is originally from Cameroon, and who currently plays for Italian team entered the store and asked to view the watch.
“I went to go buy a watch at a jewellers, not too far from my house. The watch I wanted to see was expensive. I asked the saleswoman — who was also black — ‘Could you show me that watch please?’” the footballer, who has around £63, million to his name and once the world’s highest paid footballer, told CNN.
“First, I saw her turn to her co-workers like, ‘Uh, what should I do?’ Eventually, she let me see the watch. I looked at it and said, ‘OK, I’ll buy it.’ I took out my credit card and when she went to go run it through the machine, she came back and said it was declined.”
He then asked her if it was really declined, and it was then that she revealed that some Nigerians had apparently come into the store with fake credit cards the previous week.
“I don’t know if you can imagine the weight of what she said. If one of my own makes a mistake, they judge us all. I don’t think she’s a racist person, but she stereotyped all black people as ‘those people’,” Eto’o added.
Eto’o had been speaking to CNN after receiving the European Medal of Tolerance for his work against racism. He added that his sports star status did not make him immune to racism, and that he was ‘shocked’ by the racist attacks on the Paris Metro trains.
