BENJI'S MAD FOR IT!

“A AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGH!” If the unsuspecting receptionist at the City Football Academy wasn’t quite awake, there was no question after Benjamin Mendy walked in. It’s barely been 60 seconds since Manchester City’s perma-happy left-back welcomed FourFourTwo and kicked off the photo shoot for today’s interview, but luckily for us there’s no warm-up required: Mendy is soon screaming down our snapper’s camera lens and chuckling away at the results on a laptop in front of him. As he continues to switch up poses and effectively direct his own shoot, we know everything’s going to turn out fine.

Most footballers aren’t this simple to deal with – but then Benjamin Mendy isn’t most footballers. He’s earned a reputation as the Premier League’s funniest player with good reason, but there’s more to this 25-year-old than meets the eye.

Mendy has, after all, played under three of football’s most revered managers in Marcelo Bielsa, Leonardo Jardim and Pep Guardiola, spent three seasons in the football cauldron that is Marseille, helped Monaco overcome Paris Saint-Germain to win Ligue 1 and reach the last four of the Champions League, and briefly become the most expensive defender of all time when he joined Manchester City in 2017. Oh, and he’s a World Cup winner.

There’s much to discuss, then – and luckily for us, the Frenchman has a few fine stories to tell along the way…

A seven-year-old boy skips after his football on a pavement, looking up only to weave between the lamp posts that get in his way. His mother tells him to be careful as they get ready to cross the road, but she doesn’t understand that he can’t be stopped – not when there’s a ball in front of him. Well, at least until he . The boy can’t see what’s coming next. He has his head in the clouds, as she’ll later tell him. As his ball scampers away, the car clatters him from the side and knocks him to the ground. Fortunately, it’s not