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Although a few days ago the president of the Spanish superclub Joan Laporta deceived the club's fans by stating that Cameroonian Samuel Eto'o would "become" a "Barça" player in the next 12 hours, after today's events, these words no longer seem so false.
One of the longest and most confusing transfer sagas has finally reached its climax - Samuel Eto'o has finally become a player for Barcelona. He will be officially presented at a press conference today and will become the first Cameroonian to wear the "blaugrana" colors in the entire history of the Catalan club.
In this saga, the favorite to acquire this 23-year-old striker changed many times - for a while it seemed that Eto'o would move to Madrid, which owns 50% of the rights to this best African player of last year, but later somewhat unexpectedly the favorite turned out to be the Catalan superclub.
The Royal Madrid club refused to make a counteroffer, to which they were entitled under the current rules, and this untied the hands of their fiercest rival - the Barcelona club.
Unofficially, it is said that "Real" and "Barcelona" will split the amount paid - about 24 million euros.
Recently, it was said that "Real" would like to use Eto'o as bait in an attempt to acquire England's star Michael Owen, but now they will have to give up on that idea.
Last season, Eto'o was the biggest star of "Mallorca" in the Spanish championship scoring 17 goals. After this purchase, Barcelona's summer expenses exceeded 60 million euros.
It is still unclear how the head coach of Barcelona, Dutchman Frank Rijkaard, will react to this transfer. This strategist was not a supporter of acquiring Eto'o and has even stated that "Eto'o is not needed." Meanwhile, it was revealed today that Barcelona's summer purchase, Portuguese Deco, suffered an injury and will not train for about a week. This means that the Brazilian-born midfielder will have to miss the friendly match against "Parma". Another summer purchase for Barcelona, Brazilian Sylvinho, will not play for about ten days due to a knee injury.
