Eto’o kicks off in gun-happy republic

In the dangerous mountains of Dagestan, football superstar Samuel Eto’o ran out on to the field of a tiny stadium on Sunday to begin what he says is an adventure into the unknown.

Eto’o, 30, was bought last month from Inter Milan by a Russian oligarch for a sum that makes him the world’s highest-paid football player.

He has left behind a life in the limelight on the European circuit to play for an obscure team in Makhachkala, a city so unsafe that he will fly in only to play, as he did this weekend, and then fly out again to Moscow.

In his first home game, Eto’o scored one of two goals in a 2-1 victory over Volga. Supporters chanted his name and the name of his new club, Anzhi. As he walked off, small boys ran out to touch him, chased by security men with black batons.

His new club’s owner, the oligarch Suleyman Kerimov, signed the Cameroonian player from Inter Milan, putting an unusual twist on a brilliant career that has included three European Champions League titles with Barcelona and Inter Milan.

“I have already swept all possible awards, and I’d like to start a new stage in my career,” he said at a news conference at the stadium. “Anzhi’s new history is just beginning, and I want to go all the way from A to Z with the club. I will be happy to write my name into this history.”

All of this has puzzled many fellow players.

“I really think that in choosing to go over there to Russia he has to some extent signed his sporting death warrant,” said former goalkeeper of the Cameroon national team, Joseph-Antoine Bell.

Clearly the money drew him: £19 million over three years, although team officials deny disclosing that figure.

Mr Kerimov has promised to build a new stadium to replace the city’s run-down facility that now seats fewer than 16,000.

It was not clear how much Eto’o knew about Dagestan before he came, a mountainous region on the western shore of the Caspian Sea that has surpassed Chechnya as the most violent republic in the North Caucasus.

Dagestan’s violence grows from a seemingly intractable knot of clan and business rivalries, religion, separatism, crime and extortion, feuds, and vendettas whose roots run deep into its region’s history. Every year, according to reports, 100 police officers are killed there.

On the night before Eto’o’s arrival, five people were reported killed in gun fights.

Many people who live here, beaten down by poverty and almost daily violence, appear to be watching the billionaire oligarch’s indulgences without rancour. Dagestan has an unemployment rate of at least 40 per cent and survives on subsidies from the Kremlin that make up 75 per cent of the region’s budget.

“The baron does what the baron wishes,” said Kamil Isayev, 39, manager of a telephone shop, using a phrase that echoes the feudal nature of Dagestan. “He decides where his money goes. He spends here, he spends there.”

Mr Kerimov, 45, who like many in Dagestan is more interested in wrestling than in football, made his billions in oil, mining and finance and is now thought to be worth £4.9 billion.

He has spent lavishly since he bought the Anzhi club in January to buy big-name football players, and the team’s position in the standings has been creeping upward. Foreigners now make up 30 per cent of the team.