Nabil Fekir: ‘I was a kid in Lyon who only thought about having fun on the pitch’

Nabil Fekir strolls through the door wearing shorts and sliders and settles into a chair, tucking Europe’s most punished limbs under the table. Look for a footballer who gets kicked like him and there isn’t one anywhere. Of all the players in La Liga, all the players in all the continent’s five major leagues in fact, he suffered the most fouls last season. Yet you cannot help wondering if he almost prefers it that way, and there’s no complaint, no plea for protection, not today. Instead there’s just a smile. “No pasa nada,” he says: no worries.

Well, not none exactly. “Sometimes it’s hard to stay calm, although it’s part of your job,” he concedes, four red cards since joining Real Betis in 2019 underline that it is not always easy, and his coach, Manuel Pellegrini, has raised the voice, admitting he has encouraged Fekir to release the ball earlier “because if not, of every 10 moves he’s going to get whacked in eight”. But, Pellegrini says, “he has a certain style: he likes to play and enjoys the contact”. As for the Frenchman, he always comes back for more. “It’s my game. I dribble. I need the ball. So I get fouled a lot. No problem.”

You cannot change that and would not want to, the fouling partly a product of more enjoyable metrics. There is a reason why he is given a certain freedom. He has scored or assisted 50 goals since joining Betis, in double figures for both last season, a season in which only three players in Europe gave more “pre-assists”. In La Liga, only Iker Muniain made more chances and only Rubén García completed more passes into the area. Across all competitions, no midfielder in Europe attempted or completed more dribbles.

There was more. A first Copa del Rey win for Betis in 17 years, only their