MODEL PRO ARSENAL v MAN CITY
Boy Why Leroy Sane is the poster- of Pep Guardiola’s City revolution
MATIJA NASTASIC is not regarded as one of the most influential Manchester City players of modern times. His 34 appearances were spread over three seasons until he left for the German Bundesliga in 2015 to general indifference.
Yet history may judge the Serb defender’s greatest contribution to have taken place off the pitch. City’s fresh and exciting £37million poster-boy Leroy Sane says he took advice from his Schalke team-mate last season before deciding which of Europe’s leading clubs to join.
‘He told me Manchester City were a very big club, a very good club with nice people that would help you a lot, like a family. And it was good advice because everything he told me has happened,’ says Sane, who at 21 is central to Pep Guardiola’s Etihad Stadium project.
The first thing you notice about Sane when he walks into the room is that he is taller than he appears on television. His features are delicate, framed by an Afro hairstyle.
You can see why advertisers are falling over themselves for the German, chosen by Sony as the successor to Gareth Bale as the face of a mobile phone campaign.
Sane says he is keeping a lid on commercial activity despite the temptations. ‘I want to focus on my career, maybe when I’m older I will do more endorsements. But I can see why footballers are role models. Every young kid looks up to us as players who are in the big teams or play in the big games. es.
‘I don’t criticise players yers for doing what they want to do. IfIfI [ Paul] Pogba wants to do something, let him. He is the best judge. He is also in his first season in the Premier League, trying to get confidence, do well.’
Sane’s career at Cityy already has the feel of f one of his bursts along g the touchline. After a slow start to his career r in England, he didn’t t score his first goal al until December. Eight
h more have rapidly followed, along with a series of man- of- the- match performances and he’s among the six nominees for PFA Young Player of the Year.
‘ At the beginning here, I was thinking other players might be better than me and Iw ass a bit scared because I was with ha a new team in a new coun- try and a league that was completely different,’ he says.
‘ Pep told me to play like I did at Schalke because I was free there and that the guys I was up p against were only normalmal human beings. That I wasas as good as them.
‘ That game against Arsenal in December was the turning point. I had a good week in training beforehand. It felt right and in the match I scored my first goal after they had taken the lead. I realised it was the time to say “Yes, now carry on”.
‘The coach told me the same: to play free and with confidence. Of course it’s good to work with some- one who has trained Messi every day! ‘Messi and Ronaldinho were my heroes and Pep knows what Messi does in practice sessions. So it gives me confidence when he says: “Try to do it like this, like Messi or Ney Neymar does”.’ P Perhaps it’s not surp prising that Guardiola i s seen as a major influence. The Spaniard has been charged with making City sexy to a global audience as we well as winning t rophie phies. The th threat of Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling and Sane as a front three is devastating and that’s without adding Sergio Aguero, David Silva and any more worldclass signings into the mix.
ty But Sane has received outside help as well, not least from one of his opponents today, Germany team-mate Mesut Ozil.
Although there is seven-year age gap, the youngster has a close friendship with the World Cup winner at Arsenal, who also started his career at Schalke. The pair have played together for the national team and went on holiday to California last summer.
‘Mesut is older than me but sometimes he is like a kid!’ says Sane. ‘We went on holiday after the European Championship to enjoy the weather, tourist attractions like Sunset Boulevard. We tried not to speak about football then. It’s good to have some older friends, they have a lot more experience than us young ones.
‘Mesut said when I came to England that I could always ask him for some hhelpl help if if if III neededdd needed ii tit and dandh he heh has hash helped helpedld me. We speak regularly. We talk about my career, how my season is going, how I am playing. We might speak every week or two and I also go to meet him in London.’ At City, his best friend is probably Sterling, who also had to cope with a high-pressure transfer when he signed from Liverpool. ‘Yeah, he knows how it is to be young and to play in a big club. He knows how difficult it is to feel comfortable and gain confidence, so we have that in common. We chat about different issues, we like the same stuff musically. We’re into hip- hop artists, we’re fans of Drake. Things like that.’ Sane’s English has improved rapidly over the season so that he barely needs the translator sitting with us. Physios from the German national team remarked after Sane’s first call- up that they’d never seen a player whose muscles seemed as relaxed after a training session as before.
Certainly, he is lucky with the sporting genes.Father Samy was an international forward for Senegal and settled in Germany after moving there in the Eighties to play. Though Leroy was too young to see his dad play, he watched YouTube videos of him and regards him with Messi and Ronaldinho as a sporting hero.
His mum Regina [Weber] won a rhythmic gymnastics bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and his younger brothers are also tipped to be professional footballers. They will all be at Wembley this afternoon.
‘We were still a normal family,’ says Sane. ‘For sure, my parents knew what you should eat and [how to] train and behave in order to be serious about sport. But t hey weren’t pushy, saying you had to be a certain way.
‘ They gave me a choice. If I wanted to ask any questions, I could and they would help me but they didn’t make a lot of pressure. They were quite easy. If I wanted to go to McDonald’s, they said OK. It wasn’t like I couldn’t eat certain things. It was normal and sometimes I did go to McDonald’s. At dinner time, we wouldw talk about sport, butbu not every day. Sometimesti it was just what we’d wall been up to .’
Sane has already gone throughth a lot of experiencese for someone of his age. On his debut for Germany against FranceF in 2015 a bomb ata the Stade de France killedk three people. ‘The start of the night was so good; my first game for my country. I was happy and proud. Then TThen those events that were so deeply ddeeplyl upsettingup and negative. The players were given the choice to stay in the stadium or go back to the hotel until our flight. We decided to stay, it felt safer than travelling back into the city [where there had been other attacks].
‘The bomb next to the Dortmund bus brought it back. I cannot understand how people act like this. Footballers are human beings. They may be more famous than others but still human beings and no reason to attack them.’
And so to today and Wembley Stadium for City’s FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal. ‘I’ve never been,’ he says. ‘The closest was watching Bayern and Dortmund on TV in the 2013 Champions League final there. I am very excited about playing there, looking forward to it. I have been told it is a very big game for all the people in England.
‘ People have told me it’s good because the fans are split into two, so if you score a goal at the end where your fans are, it is amazing. Kompany, Clichy, Sterling, all the players who have been there have been telling me.’