HAPPY HAMMER
PABLO FORNALS is flying with West Ham and Spain after a tough start in east London. He’s one...
THIS has to be a first: someone singing I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles in the main stand at Spain’s training ground just outside Madrid.
‘They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,’ continues West Ham’s Pablo Fornals before translating the song back into Spanish, ‘Pompas de jabon, lindas pompas de jabon’.
Looking out on to the main training pitch and grinning broadly, Fornals is demonstrating that his English is good and that he knows the club song.
He is a happy man because he’s where he wants to be right now: living in London, back in the Europa League with West Ham and back in the Spain squad after a three-year absence. He came on as a second-half substitute on Sunday and immediately set up Spain’s fourth goal in a 4-0 win over Georgia. Tonight he’ll play his part as they face Kosovo.
When West Ham signed Fornals in 2019, European football and Spain call-ups were what were expected. His progress was hampered by a difficult first year, but under David Moyes he is thriving and excited by the Europa League challenge. Can West Ham use Villarreal’s triumph last season to inspire them?
‘Well, Villarreal are used to playing in European competition, but why not?’ he says. ‘In the end, each team has to play their own tournament and what we do on the pitch will decide how far we go. You can never get distracted from the league because that is going to dictate where you will be the following year, but the excitement we all have about playing the Europa League is immense.’
Perhaps that applies even more to Fornals, who had a tough first season interrupted by a change of manager, a relegation battle and the pandemic. When Manuel Pellegrini was replaced at the end of 2019, Fornals soon dropped out of the team under Moyes.
It was at Liverpool in February 2020 that things began to change for the attacking midfielder. ‘There was an injury at half-time and there were doubts about what to do because the manager had only just taken over,’ recalls Fornals. ‘He asked Mark Noble what, between various options, he would do. Mark was in a stage of his career where he was a bit of a link (between players and manager) and he looked at me, turned back and said for the coach to give the opportunity to me.’
Fornals didn’t waste it, scoring in the second half. It was the first step on the road to convincing Moyes he was worth his place in the team.
‘That’s a day in my life that I’ll never forget and it shapes what follows,’ he says.
Coronavirus sent football into lockdown soon after and placed Fornals (right) alone in his flat, with his friends and family back in Spain. But he was boosted by having shown the manager what he was capable of and used the downtime to come back stronger than ever. ‘I would go for a run each morning and the club sent us things to do at home. I would also train with a fitness coach online. Sixty per cent of the day was dedicated to training.’
He got to explore the city, pounding the streets, and when he and West Ham returned after the break, they pulled away from relegation and set the foundations for last season’s sixth-place finish.
‘They were tough weeks,’ Fornals admits. ‘I don’t think they were harder for me than anyone else but I was on my own. I never thought, “I want to leave”. Instead I was determined to use lockdown to reduce my adaptation time.’ Coach, captain and team-mates were in regular touch to help him through that difficult period and perhaps that explains the bond that has developed.
‘I didn’t know too much about the team before I joined,’ he says. ‘I had seen them play and I knew the club, but I wasn’t a fan the way I am now.’
When it’s put to him that he’s really fallen for the club, he says: ‘Completely. The songs, the crossed hammers sign from fans when they see you in the street, the bubbles.’
He does concede, however, that it’s still Paella 1 Pie and Mash 0. He’s found a Spanish restaurant in London’s West End that cooks the rice just like his father back home, but he hasn’t been taken out for the local speciality yet. ‘They have had it (pie and mash) at the club canteen but I haven’t tried it,’ he says.
When Pellegrini left, it could have been the beginning of the end for the 25-year-old but he says he was clear from the off: ‘I was not Manuel’s player, I was West Ham’s and I had to give everything for the new coach.’
Moyes knows La Liga well after managing Real Sociedad, although Fornals says the two are yet to swap stories.
‘Every now and then he will have a go at saying a few words in Spanish, his coaching staff, too,’ he says. ‘But we are too focused on the here and now to talk too much about it.’
So what does Moyes ask of him? ‘Nothing more than he asks of everyone — a lot of hard work and that in the final third we make the difference,’ he says.
Fornals has been doing just that with the help of Michail Antonio and their good relationship off the pitch seems to have helped on it. ‘It shows, doesn’t it? It really shows. We have a very good understanding. The relationship is good with everyone but with Micky we have got used to playing together.
‘He knows what I’m going to do or where I’m going to run. And I know what he is going to do; if he wants it played long or to feet. Almost without looking, one knows where the other is.’
Fornals certainly knows where he is right now: in a good place, enjoying international and European football once again.
‘I’m a more complete player (than when last called up by Spain in 2018),’ he says. ‘I don’t think my work ethic has changed because I have always given everything, but I’ve learned from playing in the Premier League, from my team-mates and the opposition. I’m very happy.’