Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba are the most popular footballers to emerge from the African continent; their on and off-pitch contributions in their home continent and the world at large also mean their influence transcends football.

And as it is with La Liga’s leading lights of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, expending vital man hours to debate the qualities of Eto’o and Drogba is an exercise in futility, rather it is important to note that when these two highly garlanded superstars hang up their boots for good, African football, nay the entire sport, will be poorer for to their absence.

This week Eto’o and Drogba turn 35 and 38 respectively, and like every other sportsperson entering the twilight of their career, the time to decide when to call it a day looms large.

With this in mind, Squawka has decided to comprehensively celebrate the achievements of Eto’o and Drogba as well as the legacy they will leave behind when they eventually quit the game.

Club Career

Eto’o

The careers of many young Francophone Africans has usually followed a well-worn path: from playing on dusty streets to a lucky break in the French Ligue 1, not many pass through the four walls of a football academy. But Eto’o was different.
The son of an accountant, Eto’o had a stable and comfortable childhood, starting out at Kadji Sports Academy in his hometown of Douala, Cameroon’s largest city.

Before long the scouts at Real Madrid’s youth academy La Fábrica spotted him, and in 1997 aged 16, he moved to the Spanish capital. This was part of Real’s concerted drive to improve the quality of their youth system by recruiting the best youngsters the world over, a move that saw Esteban Cambiasso arrive from Argentinos Juniors a year before Eto’o.

No one told him it would be chilly in winter, and the young Eto’o disembarked at the Barajas airport, where Real forgot to send anyone to pick him up, clad in shorts and a t-shirt. Eto’o was given 15,000 pesetas – about £100 – spending money: “I found the nearest clothes shop and bought warm jumpers,” said Eto’o. Pedja Mijatovi?, Real’s Serbian centre forward at the time, gave Eto’o a pair of designer loafers.

Life in Madrid began in earnest. Due to his youth, Eto’o could only train with Real Madrid B – Castilla – but the end of the season of his arrival, the team was relegated to the Segunda División B, where non-EU players are not allowed. This led to a number of loan spells in the lower tiers of Spanish football from CD Leganés to Mallorca via Espanyol where he failed to make a single appearance for the club. If the Espanyol experience was chastening for Eto’o, it was at Mallorca’s Iberostar Stadium that the young Cameroonian found love, and began to show glimpses of his immense potential.

Mallorca were having a decent season prior to Eto’o’s arrival in the winter of 2000, and thanks to his six goals in 15 league appearances which included a double in a 3-0 win over Louis van Gaal’s Barcelona, the island club finished 10th. Mallorca signed him permanently in the summer of 2000 for a club record fee of £4.4 million, before departing for Barcelona in 2004 as the club’s all time leading goalscorer with 69 goals.

It was at Barcelona that Eto’o rewrote the history books, scored goals by the truckload and finished third on the Fifa World Player of the Year award, the first African player to finish on the podium since George Weah in 1995. He also won the Pichichi in 2006, and in 2009 became the second player to score in two Champions league finals.

His divisive personality has often been cited as his one major flaw, and after a reported falling out with the Barcelona hierarchy in 2009 he departed to join José Mourinho at Inter Milan. They made magic happen together as Inter became the first and only Italian team to win a treble in a single season.

Eto’o’s early career nomadic streak returned after his spell at Inter as a move to become the world’s highest paid player at Anzhi Makhachkala has since been followed by short stints at Chelsea, Everton, Sampdoria and Antalyaspor, where he was briefly player-manager.

Drogba

For Drogba, the road to stardom was more conventional for a player of Francophone roots, as he started out professionally at Le Mans after moving to the city from the Parisian suburb of Antony to study accountancy at the Université du Maine.

It may seem implausible now, given his remarkable physical threat, but Drogba’s lack of a formal academy background saw him struggle to adapt to the intense physical rigours of training every day and playing every week as a professional, and as it was under manager Jacques Loncar at his first club, Levallois, who was unimpressed with an 18-year old Drogba who scored on his debut, that there were serious doubts about the Ivorian’s talent.

Drogba was 21 at the time, with time running out on him to establish himself as a professional at the highest level. He got his head down, earned a professional contract and started a family with his wife, Alla, a Malian he met in Paris. “Isaac’s birth was a turning point in my life, it straightened me out,” Drogba told the Observer’s Brian Oliver in a 2007 interview.

An injury in his sophomore season saw him lose his place to Daniel Cousin and halfway through the third in 2001/02, he was sold to Guingamp for £80,000. There were initial doubts yet again about Drogba at his new club, and it took 17 goals in 34 appearances in his second season to make a mockery of such doubts. The biggest clubs in France took notice of the prolific young striker, with Marseille following up their interest with a £3.3m offer.

It was at Marseille, where he spent a solitary season, that Europe became aware of Drogba’s talents. The first of many individual accolades came in the form of the National Union of Professional Footballers Player of the Year award following a return of 32 goals in 55 appearances across five competitions.

Drogba is still much loved in Marseille; his shirt from his time along the Côte d’Azur is framed in the basilica of Marseille, Notre-dame de la Garde which he presented to the church before the 2004 UEFA Cup Final, which they lost 2-0 to Rafael Benítez’s Valencia.

Drogba’s £24m move to Chelsea saw him become a household name, and the rest is history.

Well, it isn’t history as history is vulnerable to being embellished or underplayed; what happened was a massive transformation of club and player as well as the formation of a bond between fans and player that is rarely found in modern football.

Roman Abramovich’s millions got the party started in west London, bringing in Mourinho from Porto with Drogba, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Petr ?ech becoming the mainstays of a the modern day Chelsea.

The British media were initially sceptical of Drogba, his propensity to go down under minimal contact not exactly endearing him. But once it became apparent that he was immensely talented and was capable of delivering when it mattered most, Drogba became a darling of the press. Drogba’s best moments came in the biggest games, in fact he lived for those games: his last kick in a Chelsea shirt first time round was the penalty that secured the Champions League in 2012. As far as moments go, they do not come bigger than that.

Like Eto’o, Drogba’s exit from the club where he made his name saw him embark on a fairly peripatetic career that took in stints at Galatasaray, Shanghai Shenhua and a return to Chelsea for a valedictory campaign. These days, the Ivorian is scoring goals for fun in the MLS with Canadian side Montreal Impact.

International career

This is where Eto’o edges Drogba in terms of achievement and overall contribution. Make no mistake, Drogba is the greatest Ivorian to have ever kicked a football and his record with the Elephant of Cote d’Ivoire cannot be sniffed at, but what Eto’o achieved with Cameroon is simply phenomenal.

Eto’o

From the moment Eto’o became the youngest participant at the 1998 World Cup in France aged 17 years 3 months, it was evident ‘Little Milla’ was destined for greatness. Two years later he was a member of the Cameroon U20 side that won Olympic gold in Sydney, the same year he won the Africa Cup of Nations, a competition he would win again in 2002. Eto’o is the highest goalscorer in the history of the competition with 16 goals.

Drogba

Drogba’s greatest disappointment remains his failure to strike gold in a competition his rival won twice, despite reaching the final on two occasions in 2006 and 2012. The disappointment is exacerbated by the fact that Drogba missed crucial penalties in both finals, a surprising deviation from his form as the man for the big occasion at Chelsea.

Off the pitch

Footballers are often charged with the responsibilities of being role models to young kids, and nowhere is this more commonplace than in Africa. In Africa being a footballer is only a part of the job description, footballers are also harbingers of hope and their influence is important in bringing about societal change. It is no surprise to see the average African footballer travelling back home during the holidays to commission a project, run their academies or provide cash relief for the poor.

Eto’o

In 2006, Eto’o established the Samuel Eto’o Private Foundation, to raise awareness of conditions that young children face in his home continent and particularly, Cameroon. The Foundation provides access to basic healthcare, quality education and football training to thousands of kids across Africa.
Perhaps more importantly, Eto’o, in 2015, began to raise funds for victims of the terrorist machinations of Boko Haram, who are currently killing people in Northeastern Nigeria and Northwestern Cameroon. “This is a humanitarian crisis of unbearable gravity,” Eto’o said during a documentary to launch the Yellow Whistle Blower initiative to raise funds for those affected by the violence.

Drogba

For Drogba, bringing peace to his war ravaged country has been a vital part of his humanitarian activities. Cote d’Ivoire witnessed a brutal civil war that ravaged the country for five years and was gradually coming to an end in October 2005, the year the national team qualified for its maiden appearance at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Minutes after qualification was secured, Drogba picked up a microphone in the dressing room and, surrounded by his teammates, fell to his knees live on national television. He begged the rebel-held Muslim North and the government-controlled Christian South to sheathe their sword and embrace peace. Within a week, his wish had come to pass and thus began a much-needed reconciliation process between the warring factions.

“It was just something I did instinctively,” Drogba explained to The Telegraph’s Alex Hayes during an interview in 2007. “All the players hated what was happening to our country and reaching the World Cup was the perfect emotional wave on which to ride.”

He added: “Seeing both leaders side by side for the national anthems was very special. I felt then that that the Ivory Coast was born again.”

Drogba then successfully campaigned that an Africa Cup of Nations qualifier be moved to Bouake in the rebel-held north, a move that also helped the peace process. He is a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador, and in 2009 used the entirety of his £3m endorsement deal with Pepsi to build a hospital in Abidjan, his country’s capital.

Little known is the fact that there is a stadium named after the Ivorian; his first club Levallois used their £600,000 cut of the £24m deal that took him to Chelsea to refurbish their facilities and renamed the ground Stade Didier Drogba in his honour.

Verdict

Who wins? Our vote would go to Eto’o, due primarily to achievements with the Cameron national team, and his versatility which makes him a more useful player to have on a team. This is not to belittle Drogba or reduce him to a one trick pony; how could one do that anyway, when the skill he had was being consistently brilliant in front of goal.

In Inter’s run to the treble in 2010, Eto’o often played out of position to accommodate Diego Milito as the focal point of attack, and the Cameroonian excelled coming in from the flanks. His performance in the second leg semifinal defeat was characteristically selfless and when his side was reduced to 10 men due to Thiago Motta’s sending off, Eto’o dropped deep to help with defending as he ended his return to his old stomping ground as the nominal right back alongside Maicon.

As their birthdays remind us of their imminent retirement, we should savour the best moments these two icons of the global game have given us over the past 19 years. They simply don’t make footballers like them anymore.