Belgian side Anderlecht have confirmed the signing of former Arsenal, Manchester City and France midfielder Samir Nasri, reuniting him with his former City team-mate Vincent Kompany.
The 32-year-old hasn’t played since leaving West Ham at the end of last season, six months after signing a short-term deal with the Hammers in January.
He arrived at the London Stadium just as he completed an 18-month ban from football for doping offences, having tested positive for a banned substance in 2016 that he claimed had administered unknowingly.
And in a bizarre animated short which boasts that Nasri is “quicker than a horse”, the 34-time Belgian champions confirmed via their Twitter account that the former France international has joined them, linking up once again with his former skipper at City.
Kompany left the Premier League champions at the end of this past season having scored the most important goal of the team’s run-in, a 30-yard bullet to earn Pep Guardiola’s side a 1-0 win against Leicester City in their penultimate game.
He was appointed as player-coach by the Brussels giants 19 May, just a week after lifting the Premier League trophy for the fourth time as City captain and bringing to an end an 11-year association with the club he joined back in 2008.
Nasri joined Arsenal from Marseille in 2008 and spent three seasons in north London before becoming restless and agitating for a move to big-spending City in 2011.
He played alongside Kompany in 2012 as the team won its first top-flight title in 44 years, pipping arch-rivals Manchester United to the championship on goal difference on the season’s final day. The pair won the league again with City in 2014.
Anderlecht are about to go into their first season with European football in five years after they finished sixth in Belgium’s Jupiler League, and their season was marred by violent protests, crowd trouble and incidences of flairs being thrown onto the pitch.
Anderlecht’s sporting director Michael Verschueren said of Kompany’s appointment: “With Vincent’s return we have achieved something that everyone thought was impossible. Vincent is the child of the house and the person we need to give a new impulse to the club and to use for RSCA 2.0.”
