Finally managing to leave Leicester City, Nampalys Mendy quickly found himself a new club in RC Lens in France.
After so many years of limbo at the King Power Stadium, the midfielder now gets to play in the Champions League, where he will face Arsenal on Wednesday night.
Ahead of the game, Mendy sat down with La Voix des Sports, where he discussed the last few years and how tough life was for him at Leicester.
Describing his experience at the now Championship side, the Senegal international felt it was ‘mixed’, as he grew as a person and as a player, and it allowed him to ‘mature and progress’.
An injury did stop him for the best part of two years, and it took him a long time to find his level again, leaving him in a situation where he really had to question his future.
He said: “It’s really when I came back (from his loan at Nice), when Claude Puel was managing, that I managed to properly return, with a good pre-season. I asked myself a lot of questions: stopping? I spoke about it with those close to me. I don’t know if I would have done it, but I thought about stopping. I was mostly frustrated.”
As for whether this game against Arsenal in the Champions League is a great time fro him to prove a point, that’s not how the former Leicester man looks at it.
He said: “Prove a point, I don’t think so, but I’m happy because it’s an English club, and I know people I was with at Leicester will watch this game. It’s an extra motivation. Just like the first game. It’s really personal, it does me a lot of good.
“It’s maybe a bit of ego, but it’s normal, I think. I don’t have bitterness, I try and move on, to do my best. I’ve never cheated. When I was on the pitch, I was performant, but there were decisions. It’s part of our sport. To be honest, I always tried to leave Leicester, but I never managed it. I was never in the offices, but it was always complicated to leave, and not just for me.”
This comes a couple of weeks after the 31-year-old unloaded in an interview about the poor treatment he received and how he felt had ‘come alive’ again since leaving Leicester on a free this summer when his contract finally expired.
