Samuel Eto’o: I misjudged Jose Mourinho

London: If Samuel Eto’o had any worries about returning to football at the highest level, then he left them in Russia.

Life is good for Eto’o. When we meet, the man who recently took a £10 million pay cut is grinning on a couch in the posh bar of a Leicester Square hotel.

A few moments earlier, Evander Holyfield popped in to get a picture. The former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world posted it on Twitter almost immediately.

Eto’o says he and Jose Mourinho ‘were born to win together’, first at Inter Milan and now at Chelsea. It was less cordial in March 2005, when Eto’o, who had just been knocked out of the Champions League with Barcelona at Stamford Bridge, charged up to Mourinho and said: “I know you are a great person and a great coach but in truth you are just a s***.”

“Before I met him I never thought I would work with him,” he says. “I got it wrong. I have also said thanks to God that he gave me the opportunity to spend one season with him at Inter. We understand that we were born to win together. Mourinho was 60 per cent of the reason I came here. The rest of it was the players here are the best in the world.”

The last two years have been spent earning £17m a season — after tax — in Russia at Anzhi Makhachkala, and Eto’o is in a reflective mood. The striker was 32 this year and has started to look back. It’s why we’re here, talking about his book, written in the form of a comic with the help of Joelle Esso, who he approached because her previous work has entertained his four children.

The first of nine volumes is completed, and look at his days growing up in Cameroon.

There are revelations about the time he ran away as a 12-year-old on a football tour of France and made a failed attempt to live with an uncle. It’s sensitive from a man with a notorious ego, and one labelled ‘selfish’ by former Anzhi boss Roberto Carlos this week.

“What has brought me here is that as a kid I was capable of dreaming,” Eto’o says. “When I stop dreaming my story will be over. I want to tell kids a true story about how a poor kid from a poor neighbourhood achieved something big. My first idea was to tell my story to kids and a story told with pictures gives the most access.”

The ulterior motive he won’t discuss fully is that the book’s profits will go to his charity foundation in Cameroon. It is understood he has invested more than £5m into projects relating to schools, health, sport and child justice.

“If I was very rich but had no friends and had no family, at the end of the day I would be poor,” he says. “I recently visited a building in Cameroon which they [the government] are giving as a gift to turn into a paediatric hospital. When you do something, if you talk too much about it people think you want to show off.”

Eto’o says he wants to focus on ‘good things’. “When life becomes tougher it makes you realise how lucky you are. The early period of my life continues to motivate me to achieve things.”

In London, he is expecting big things under Mourinho.

— Daily Mail