Manchester City’s 2014 title triumph is probably remembered for Steven Gerrard’s slip and Liverpool’s implosion more than the brilliant football played by Manuel Pellegrini’s side.
It is often forgotten that City set a new English record for most goals in a season when they scored 156 in all competitions - later broken by Pep Guardiola’s side - on the way to landing a Premier League and League Cup double.
At the centre of it was the enigmatic Samir Nasri. The French midfielder was signed from Arsenal for £25 million ($30m) three years earlier and had the best season of his career in a terrifying attacking unit that included Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, David Silva and Yaya Toure.
Nasri was hugely influential; he scored at Wembley to put City ahead in the 3-1 League Cup final victory over Sunderland and then hit the opening goal in the must-win final game of the season against West Ham to help secure a second Premier League winner’s medal.
Finishing the season with 12 goals from 50 appearances, it should have been a springboard for the 26-year-old as he moved into the best years of his career. But a litany of injuries and misjudgments have resulted in Nasri playing just 99 games in the six seasons since - a third of those in the campaign that immediately followed.
For a player compared to Zinedine Zidane by his first coach Albert Emon at Marseille, it is a frustrating waste of talent.
This season has been spent with Anderlecht under their new boss and former City team-mate Vincent Kompany. However, his time in Belgium looks likely to be short with the club unlikely to take up a one-year extension.
He denies reports that he went missing and cut contact with team bosses after the Covid-19 outbreak shut down football across Europe, and while the 32-year-old insists he has done nothing wrong, it is yet another off-field incident that has cast a shadow over the playmaker and taken away from his undoubted quality on the pitch.
Nasri has never been too far away from controversy. Most serious was a ban in 2018 for receiving intravenous treatment at the Los Angeles 'Drip Doctors' clinic in breach of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s rules. It came to light after a seemingly innocuous update from the clinic in 2016 which gained added prominence due to a string of explicit tweets when he appeared to have his Twitter account hacked.
Nasri was on loan at Sevilla at the time, having been one of the high-profile victims - along with goalkeeper Joe Hart - of Guardiola’s resetting of the club following his arrival.
There were already suggestions that his impetuousness would not sit well with the Catalan when it was announced he would take over and Nasri did not make an appearance in pre-season after reporting back overweight.
After his one outing under Guardiola, as a 75th-minute substitute in the win over West Ham, his final words to reporters were: "I will not talk to you because you all called me ‘Fat Sam’.”
It was a sad way to end his time at the Etihad Stadium, but his influence had already started to dissipate. His previous season had been wrecked by a horrendous groin injury in a freak training ground accident that required 100 stitches and forced him to miss nearly six months.
Guardiola rated Nasri’s ability, but he left for Spain following the arrivals of Leroy Sane and Nolito, who posed an immediate threat to his starting position. There were concerns about his attitude away from the pitch and allegations of arrogance and surliness have followed him wherever he has gone.
Rash decisions such as his handling of his exit from Arsenal when he criticised the Emirates fans, a stroppy retirement from the French national team at 27, and even being goaded by Jamie Vardy into a red card in Sevilla’s Champions League defeat to Leicester would seem to back up those judgements.
"At the start he was a very talented boy but very p*ssed off. Everything had to go through him!” Emon once conceded to Marseille's official website.
His first City boss, Roberto Mancini, said: “I would like to give him a punch. Because a player like him should play like this always, always every game,” after a man-of-the-match performance against Newcastle.
Even Nasri admitted: “From time to time, I'm a jerk,” when asked about his attitude in an interview with L'Equipe. “I’d therefore prefer to say everything I think, even if it means I'm not liked, even if it means I sound arrogant and a little pr*ck.”
Since Sevilla decided against making his loan spell permanent in 2017, Nasri has played eight times for Turkish club Antalyaspor, six times for West Ham and made eight appearances for Anderlecht - scoring twice in the last three years.
It is a disappointing final few chapters of what should have been a glorious story that will take another dip if the Jupiler League giants, as expected, decide against extending his time in Belgium.
