London jewellers refused to sell watch to Samuel Eto’o because 'some Nigerians came in the other day with fake credit cards'

London jewellers refused to sell watch to Samuel Eto’o because 'some Nigerians came in the other day with fake credit cards'

Former Chelsea striker Samuel Eto’o today claimed he was the victim of racism
when he went shopping in a west London jewellers.
The 34-year-old from Cameroon, who now plays for Italian club Sampdoria, said
he was targeted after trying to buy a £10,000 watch.
Eto’o — once the world’s highest-paid player on £350,000 a week — had gone into
the store with his brother, but said he was viewed suspiciously by the shop
assistant: “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?’
PREVIOUS
Man 'performed sex act and
made lewd remarks in front
of...
NEXT
Max Clifford re-arrested over
alleged sex offences
“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.”
The striker — the seventh-richest footballer currently playing, with an estimated
£62 million fortune — said he asked her: “Was it declined or did you not want it to
be accepted?”
Size of iframe must be at least 256x144
He told CNN: “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’.”
At Kensington Palace this week, Eto’o, who joined Chelsea for a year in 2013, was
presented with the European Medal of Tolerance for his anti-racism work. He said
that footage of Chelsea fans stopping a black man boarding a Paris Metro train
last month had “shocked” him.