Pablo Fornals spent over four years at West Ham United before leaving them for Real Betis on deadline day of the winter 2024 market.
David Moyes was in charge at West Ham last season and didn’t rely upon the midfielder in the first half of the season. To put it in context, he clocked in 419 minutes from 15 league games… of which 180 minutes were in his last two matches for West Ham.
The 28-year-old appeared as a guest on Offsiders and his comments are relayed by Estadio Deportivo.
West Ham signed him from Villarreal in 2019, when Manuel Pellegrini was in charge at the London club. Fornals was a regular for the Hammers in his first four years and was a key part of their UEFA Conference League winning squad during the 2022/23 season.
The Spaniard has revealed West Ham helped to fulfil his dream of playing in the Premier League. Towards the end, he had difficulties and has explained why he had to leave the English club.
“In the Premier League, I had fulfilled a dream, but when you are no longer so happy when you get home, they notice it too. My son had a hard time adapting to the school there… We saw that it was time to leave and how lucky we were to arrive at Betis,” he said.
“I fulfilled my contract at the end of last season, but in England the clubs have the option to extend it for another year unilaterally, which in Spain is illegal without negotiating.
“I arrived one day, and they told me that they had signed me for another year. That’s it, I saw myself there another year; but at Christmas offers came and we wanted to return to Spain.”
There were some concerns Real Betis weren’t able to finalise the deal on deadline day and the transfer was officially confirmed the following day. The former West Ham shared what he went through during that period.
“The Betis thing happened, but it almost didn’t happen. The transfer did not arrive, West Ham made a mistake in some information and the operation was not completed, the same thing happened to Benhrama and me,” Fornals explained.
“It didn’t agree with the data that Betis sent, and it wasn’t done. It’s already been February 2nd, with the market closed, because UEFA allows it. It was shown that there was no bad faith, just an error and in the application, it was seen that West Ham tried to replicate the data 10 or 11 times.
“I was at the stadium, there had been a match that day. It was 11pm. I said goodbye to my teammates, the coach made a beautiful speech, we were all excited, hugging each other, and I was crying like I’ve rarely cried in my life… and it was 00:00 [12am] without the signing being completed, so in theory I had to train the next day with West Ham. Fortunately, UEFA saw that the numbers worked out and authorised it.”
