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The curious case of Samir Nasri
- Updated: September 9, 2016
While Manchester City and Manchester United go head to head in the derby on Saturday, Samir Nasri will be preparing for his Sevilla debut against Las Palmas. The talented Frenchman only recently turned 29 and should be at the peak of his career, so what’s gone wrong?
When the questioning turned to Manchester City’s incoming manager, Samir Nasri was in no doubt. “If I stay working with Pep Guardiola, if he wants me, he’s just going to be a lucky man because I will be really hungry,” he said. “I am the type of player for his philosophy and the way he likes his team to play.”
It was April and Nasri had just scored the winning goal in a 2-1 victory over West Brom at the Etihad Stadium. It was his first start since October after a six-month lay-off with a thigh injury, and the Frenchman was already envisioning a central role for himself in Guardiola’s revolution.
Fast forward a few months and his boldness appears ill-judged. Guardiola ordered an overweight Nasri to train separately to the rest of the squad in pre-season, and the midfielder’s only playing time came with a 15-minute cameo against West Ham before he completed his loan move to Sevilla.
Nasri insists Guardiola fought for him to stay “until the last moment”, but it is tempting to wonder whether the new coach was really so conflicted. Nasri’s comments do not always tally with reality, after all. When he was left out of City’s Champions League squad for the knockout stages in February, for example, he bizarrely declared he would happily finish his career at the club.
Instead, a player once regarded as the next Zinedine Zidane has left Manchester with his stock at its lowest. Injuries limited him to just 13 appearances in 2015/16, and the best season of his career remains the 2010/11 campaign with Arsenal, when he was named in the PFA Team of the Year after scoring 15 goals in 45 games. When he joined City in the summer of 2011, he was one of the Premier League’s most coveted players.
Five years at the Etihad yielded two Premier League titles and a League Cup …
