Former Chelsea and Everton striker Samuel Eto’o has splashed out a serious amount of money to buy an Italian villa, reports Corriere Dello Sport.

The £18.5million Italian mansion was said to have been bought by Eto’o despite locals warning him it is haunted by the curse of the Tutankhamun. The Cameroonian footballer has purchased the historic property in Portofino, near Genoa in northern Italy. The property, called Villa Altachiara, was previously owned by Lord Carnarvon, who was known to be jinxed with the ‘Curse of the Pharaoh’. Lord Carnarvon was working with famous English archaeologist Howard Carter when they discovered the tomb of Ancient Egyptian ruler Tutankhamun, opening the ‘cursed’ burial plot on February 16 1923. Famously, of the 58 people present when Tutankhamun’s long-lost tomb was opened, eight died within a dozen years. Moreover, Lord Carnarvon bizarrely died after he got an infection after cutting a mosquito bite on his face while shaving. In addition, Lord Carnarvon’s nephew died in Villa Altachiara by falling down the stairs, while more recently, in 2001, former Gucci model and heiress Countess Francesca Agusta vanished from the cliff-top property. Those scary stories, however, have not deterred the former Chelsea and Everton man to buy Villa Altachiara. As to the property itself, the mansion has 40 rooms and 30,000 square-metres of land.