Making the switch from OGC Nice to Newcastle United in the summer, Allan Saint-Maximin has enjoyed a decent first season in the Premier League so far.
The winger has featured 21 times under Steve Bruce, where he has scored three goals and picked up four assists, able to display both his skill and pace to a wider audience.
Often accused of trying to ‘show off’, the former France U21 international also feels he’s earned himself an unfair reputation of resting on his natural talent instead of trying to improve through hard work.
He categorically disputes this, as he told France Football in an interview due to be fully published later on Monday.
He said: “People think I do nothing, that I live off my ‘natural’ ability. I’m not someone who likes to show what he does, that posts every time he goes to the gym, putting up pictures and video. Maybe it’s because I’m religious, and in my religion, it’s not necessarily good to always show what we do, in a sort of vanity. And you also need to reach an understanding of what work is.
“Take Messi, for example. OK, he has abnormal coordination skills, but when you see his ball control, so special, I’m sure it’s because he probably went everywhere with a ball. His control, his frequency of touch, his ankle flexibility all refined themselves during those moments. People will then say he didn’t need to work when I think everything that goes back to what you did as a kid counts as work”.
Thriving a bit more in England than he did in France, Saint-Maximin explains it comes down to teams being more ‘closed’ and more ‘padlocked’ in Ligue 1 compared to the intense back and forth in the Premier League.
As for what a player like him needs to do, he feels a dribbler ‘needs to win his freedom’, explaining that ‘if you are too often failing, everyone is compromised’.
That’s why he loves Kylian Mbappé so much.
He said: “His game doesn’t give you a choice. He’s so good, so efficient, that you have to give him the ball. That’s what you need to do, make it so obvious that people naturally give you the ball. That your freedom imposes itself on others”.
Whether or not he has reached that status in the Newcastle United dressing room isn’t clear yet, but with time, and perhaps more hard work, it’s something he certainly seems to feel he can achieve.
