Inter Milan forward Samuel Eto’o will join Anzhi Makhachkala, the club said on Tuesday, on a reported record-breaking contract that will make him the world’s best-paid footballer.
Former Barcelona star Eto’o is set to sign a 60-million euro, three-year contract after passing a medical on Wednesday. The transfer represents the biggest coup in Russian football history.
Bringing an end to one of the summer’s most protracted transfer sagas, negotiators eventually settled on a transfer fee thought to be 21 million euros for the 30-year-old Cameroonian. With the move, Eto'o becomes the latest recruit in Anzhi’s rags-to-riches revolution led by billionaire owner Suleiman Kerimov.
"Today an agreement was reached between the football clubs Anzhi and Inter on the transfer of the Milan club's striker Samuel Eto'o to the Makhachkala club," a statement on the Anzhi website said Tuesday.
"The transfer fee satisfies both sides completely," the statement said, adding that on Wednesday "the player will undergo a medical examination, on the results of which a three-year contract will be concluded with the footballer."
"On Thursday Samuel will arrive at his new club and start preparations for the match against Rostov," a Russian Premier League match set for Saturday. There was no confirmation of the reported fee or contract value.
Eto’o could make his home debut on September 11, when Anzhi face Volga Nizhny Novgorod.
A three-time Champions League winner with 469 career goals for Inter, Barcelona and Mallorca, Eto’o has a proven track record in the world’s toughest leagues and joins Anzhi still in his prime, a first for Russia’s improving but still obscure Premier League.
His contract is reported to provide a world record base annual salary of 20 million euros, easily eclipsing the 12 million euros Real Madrid pays Cristiano Ronaldo and double Lionel Messi’s 10 million euro deal with Barcelona. He even out-earns American sports icons Alex Rodriguez, Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning due to the favorable 13 percent tax rate.
Eto’o is the brightest in a slew of stars Kerminov has brought to Anzhi since he acquired the club in January. He joins Roberto Carlos and former Chelsea midfielder Yuri Zhirkov as part of a spending spree usually associated with Europe’s more established elite.
Kerimov, a Dagestan-born senator who made his fortune in banking, energy and metals, has tasked coach Gadzhi Gadzhiev with Champions League qualification, and two thirds of the way through the season Anzhi are on target, lying in fourth place, nine points off the lead of CSKA Moscow.
Some of Kerimov’s more astute if less stellar signings include Brazilians Diego Tardelli and Jucilei da Silva, Moroccan midfielder Moubarak Boussoufa and Hungarian winger Balazs Dzsudzsak, who have added tenacity and flair to a squad that also includes local talent. Russia coach Dick Advocaat said earlier this month he was considering calling central defensive pair Rasim Tagirbekov and Ali Gadzhibekov into the national team.
Despite the riches, Eto’o is unlikely to find any respite in Russia from the racist taunts that have reduced many games in his career to misery. He asked friends and family to refrain from attending his matches after suffering incessant abuse at Barcelona and also later at Inter.
Ominously, the worst incidents in Russian football this year have involved his new club: Roberto Carlos, who joined Anzhi in February on a 2 ½ year deal, has been persistently harassed and had bananas hurled at him from the crowd during league matches. He abandoned the pitch in protest at the last incident in June.
Zhirkov, an ethnic white Russian, was berated by home fans during the national team’s 1-0 defeat of Serbia earlier this month for choosing to join a team from the North Caucasus, a chiefly Muslim region of the country. The whistles and boos persisted during Zhirkov’s first two appearances for Anzhi earlier this month. Muscovite fans claim North Caucasus sides receive beneficial treatment from the country’s football authorities and have called for a boycott of games involving Anzhi and Chechnya’s Terek Grozny.
Eto’o will have little exposure to the more pressing issues of poverty, corruption and Islamist extremism for which Dagestan, among the very poorest of Russia’s 83 provinces, is better known. The tribal and mountainous province relies on federal funds for 80 percent of its budget; it would take the average local a century to earn what Eto’o stands to make in a week.
Although Anzhi play their home games in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, the team live and train near Moscow, a two-hour flight away. Italian media have reported that Eto’o will have use of Kerimov’s private jet to visit his family in Spain and Italy.
