Emmanuel Frimpong does not like Samir Nasri. At all.
In fact, you couldn’t pay him to be nice to his former Arsenal team-mate.
“Even if he gives me five billion dollars, I will still not like him,” Frimpong, who retired earlier this year, told The Athletic.
His dislike of Nasri stems from when, as a 19-year-old, he made his first start for Arsenal and was sent off against Liverpool in a 2-0 home defeat in August 2011.
The game was goalless at the time; he knew he’d messed up. In the changing room afterwards nobody said anything and manager Arsene Wenger stayed quiet.
“And then Nasri basically stood up in front of everybody and said we lost the game because of me,” Frimpong explained.
“OK, I can understand that, but I was thinking, ‘why would somebody —especially me playing, I think that was like my second game — why would any professional do that to a young player in that kind of moment?’”
Nasri joined Manchester City shortly afterwards for a reported £25million, but there was a heated phone conversation between the two players following the transfer.
A throwaway reply from Frimpong – “Pffffff come on Jack” – to a tweet from Jack Wilshere wishing Nasri well at his new club didn’t go down well with the Frenchman.
So when they met on the pitch as opponents in November, the two clashed verbally and then confronted each other in the tunnel afterwards – ‘handbags’ an Arsenal spokesperson said of the incident after City’s 1-0 win.
“During the game, he told me he could buy me,” Frimpong continued. “That’s how stupid this guy is. He probably could then because he had millions, but that’s no respect.
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Whereas Cesc Fabregas and other established first team players encouraged Arsenal’s youngsters, Frimpong felt Nasri was more of a bully.
“I feel like he didn’t know his responsibilities as a senior player to be able to help younger players,” adding he hopes Nasri, now 32 and playing for Vincent Kompany’s Anderlecht, has changed.
Frimpong, meanwhile, left Arsenal in 2014 with six Premier League appearances to his name and later played for Barnsley, as well as clubs in Russia, Sweden and Cyprus before a knee injury forced him to hang up his boots aged 27.
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