My first game is City! I hope I get to touch the ball Haller vows to turn on power for Hammers

The club’s £45million-record signing had to wait three years before his mum would let him take up football as a kid, making him do judo instead.

And the Frenchman made the Hammers wait, too, turning down a chance to join them last summer because he did not think he was ready.

But those early years in the dojo helped toughen him up – along with a couple of nasty accidents that earned him the nickname ‘Scarface’. Later in life he had his house ransacked and his car destroyed. But it is defences that get torn apart these days when the 6ft 3in powerhouse gets going.

One of his former coaches famously claimed “a bulldozer couldn’t knock him over”, so Manchester City could be in for quite a battle today. Haller said: “My body, my strength, this is important to me because it’s part of my football. But I think a bulldozer would kill me!

“When I found out my first game was against City I said, ‘What a s**t game to start with!’ I go there for a lot of money, now the first game is City! There are better ones to build your confidence. Hopefully, I will touch the ball!

“We need to be ready. They are champions.We will need to make a crazy game.”

Haller also earned the nickname ‘One Cool Bird’ for his calmness in front of goal, scoring 20 times for Eintracht Frankfurt last season.

But he had to wait to play the sport he loved. “When I was five, my mum said I was too young to play football. I had to do judo instead. It was so boring.

“I spent three years doing that. I swam as well. Every Wednesday. It’s where my strength comes from. Then I said, ‘Sorry mum, I have to play football now.’”

So how did he get the scars? “I was four and playing hide and seek and I grazed my face on a metal bin,” he said. “My father just put a plaster on. The other one, I was two.

“I’m stupid – I fell off the bed. I went to the hospital. And I fell a second time! They stitched it. People in my neighbourhood called me Scarface.”

And the delayed debut? “I could have come to West Ham a year ago,” Haller said. “They came for me, but it wasn’t my time to go to. I wasn’t ready. Now I am.”

Haller, whose wife is expecting their second child in September, hopes to settle better in London than he did in Holland when he played for Utrecht.

He said: “I lived in a small village.

Everyone said, ‘Oh this is nice’. But it’s the only place people killed my car and burgled my house!” He added: “I would like to play for France, but I have to prove myself. West Ham is a good place to do it.”