“Eto’o is not the greatest African footballer of all time because the others are small”.

According to Cameroonian analyst Oscar Njiki, Samuel Eto’o is the greatest because others are also great. “It’s not by comparing someone to the Pygmies that we can say he is the tallest,” he notes.

Read his analysis here:

To say that we cannot compare one person to another and at the same time say that one person is inferior or superior to another is to compare them. Hence the monumental idiocy. For example, I support both André Onana and Samuel Eto’o, and I have never compared Onana to another Cameroonian goalkeeper. I have never compared Onana to Ondoua, Bell, Kameni….

He doesn’t have to be superior to any of them, nor does he have to be better than them. He must be the best goalkeeper in the world and become better compared to himself, whom I consider the unit of measurement. I have never compared Eto’o to another Cameroonian player. Eto’o is the best player and can only be compared to himself in Cameroon in particular and in Africa in general.

Being a fan of Onana and wanting to belittle Ondoua at all costs is being petty. And every time you want to belittle the other, they will be compared on criteria that will rather belittle those you want to belittle. If you want, for example, to belittle Ondoua to elevate Onana, people will rightly remind you that one won the AFCON and the other never did. If you want to belittle Oman to elevate Eto’o, people will rightly remind you that one reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup while the other returned from two World Cup editions with Zero points.

Don’t think that being top of the class means your classmates are worthless. You can be top of the class even if you don’t do well in the only subject the bottom of the class understands. You can be top of the class with a 6 in English while the bottom of the class got an 18 in English. If you say he is bad because he is bottom of the class, he won’t be wrong to say you are bad in English.

Eto’o is not the greatest African footballer of all time because others are small. He is the greatest because others are also great. It’s not by comparing someone to the Pygmies that we can say he is the tallest.

It’s like saying that it’s only by recognizing the talent of Ondoua, Oman, Bell, Njitap… that the greatness of Onana or Eto’o can make sense. If they are so small, if they don’t want anything, then…