Four-time African footballer of the year, Samuel Eto’o has revealed how jewellers in London refused to sell him wristwatches because some Nigerians had come to the shop the day before with fake credit cards.
Eto’o during his time at Chelsea.
During an interview with CNN, Eto’o revealed how he went to buy watches with his brother but the sales rep refused to attend to them because of fear that he might be another Nigerian scammer following in the footsteps of those that came the day before.
“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?’ 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.”
“Was it declined or did you not want it to be accepted?”
“My brother asked, ‘What’s going on?’ And she said, ‘Nothing, nothing.’ But he said, ‘No, because when I came in, I saw how all of you were looking at us … My brother can afford this and the way you’re treating him shows that you think just because he’s black, he can’t afford this watch.’
“The woman then slipped up and said, ‘No, it’s just that we had some Nigerians in the store the other day who came in with fake credit cards. 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’.”
Samuel Eto’o now plays his football in Italy with Sampdoria. He previously played in Italy with Inter Milan where he won the treble under Jose Mourinho in 2010.
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