The announcement comes ten years after Eto’o left Camp Nou, and with a decade long enough to make memories hazy, it’s the perfect moment to recall just why he was Barça’s greatest number nine.
That may sound like a bold statement, and the eagle-eyed will point out that Luis Suárez has better stats on paper: 177 goals in his first five seasons for Barça, compared to 130 in the same number for the Cameroon international. It’s not just how many goals were scored though, it’s also when they were scored and what they meant, and in that regard, Eto’o is untouchable.
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For the necessary context we have to go back to 2004, the year Eto’o signed for Barça. The Blaugrana had finished second in LaLiga the season prior – even the magic of Ronaldinho not enough to stop them from enduring a fifth consecutive year without a league title or any silverware at all. The Catalans were becoming something of a joke, not meeting the expectations raised by a club of their historic significance to Spanish football.
Though their Brazilian number 10 is often credited with turning that situation around, he couldn’t do it alone. A key piece was still missing in the middle of the forward line.
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That piece was found a season after Ronaldinho’s arrival, out on the Mediterranean on the island of Mallorca. A striker with bags of class and a vendetta against Real Madrid to go with it, Eto’o couldn’t have been a more perfect fit for Barça if Joan Laporta had designed him.
Someone of Eto’o’s quality doesn’t appear out of nowhere, and these days there’s no way a goalscorer of his ability would have lasted four full seasons at Mallorca, who signed him following a short loan from Madrid. The striker was the key figure in firing the islanders to remarkable feats: a third place finish above Barcelona in 2001, qualification for the Champions League where they beat the likes of Arsenal in 2002, and a Copa del Rey win in 2003.
The odds of a side of Mallorca’s resources pulling off that kind of consistent success are tiny, and much of it was owed to the exceptional figure they had leading the line, now considered by fans to be the greatest player in the club’s history.