Mohamed Ihattaren has given an extensive interview for the first time since his departure from Italy. The midfielder looks into conversation with The Telegraph back to his turbulent time at Sampdoria, where he would never make his official debut due to personal circumstances. Ihattaren is now back in the Netherlands and working with Gerald Vanenburg on a return to the fields. FC Utrecht is about to hire the attacking midfielder for a year and a half. “I really have to get fit now. I know that I can do that quickly. That was also apparent last summer. I want to sweat, get cramps. I want to feel that I am playing football again. Great.”
Ihattaren denies that he was untraceable for some time, as stated in the media. “All is not correct, but you are shocked when you read it. Everything was said about me, but never spoken to me. Indeed, I did not hear from me after I left Sampdoria, where Juventus kept me for a season. I left because of the circumstances at Sampdoria. As a nineteen year old I sat there in a hotel room. Alone, completely left to my own devices. I couldn’t bear it anymore. All kinds of agreements were not kept. As if I did not exist .”
Among other things, the midfielder did not receive a salary and then decided to choose for himself. Ihattaren suddenly returned to the Netherlands and disappeared from the radar for a while. He did occasionally post a photo on Instagram with a personal trainer. “Nothing was arranged, no bank account or insurance. Then I chose for myself, protected myself and left. The confidence was gone. But missing, as they said at Sampdoria… Ask any random boy in Utrecht where Afellay, Labyad or Ihattaren’s mother lives and they take you to the front door, they would have seen me sitting there.”
To this day, Ihattaren has not received a single euro from Sampdoria. “What if I had broken my leg there?”, he says. “Then you see that everything is perfectly arranged in the Netherlands. We ate at the club after training and there were only three boxes of pizzas and sweet rolls. I didn’t get a salary either, so I called the team manager. “We pay here every two months,” I heard. Only that didn’t happen. I don’t care about that, but all in all it got irritating. I didn’t play for a minute, there appeared to be zero perspective and everything needed to feel at home there was missing. I called Mino (Raiola, ed.) to ask if we were going to arrange anything given the situation. He told me to keep calm.”
Without having played a minute at Sampdoria, Ihattaren decided to go back to the Netherlands. “When I got to Sampdoria there was no one there except the team manager. I had to take pictures with the shirt and train the next day. I saw some guys in suits then, so I thought: those are bigwigs, the directors. I greet them nicely. It could also have been taxi drivers. I had no idea and they had no idea who I would be. The trainer didn’t even know I’m left-footed. But I thought: I’m just going to make something beautiful out of it. Play football and shut up.”
To make matters worse, Ihattaren soon started having problems with his hamstring. “I had to have an MRI scan three times, one of which was an hour and a half from Genoa. I don’t know why. Each time there was no damage. I said I felt good and just wanted to train, but I was only allowed to cycle and swimming at the physio’s. It seemed as if they did not understand or wanted to understand me at all. It felt like I was on holiday! In the group there was also irritation because of all the lack of clarity. For example, I got into an altercation with Antonio Candreva (former Italian international who plays his place, ed.), while I have a lot of respect for his career. The level there was really no higher than at PSV.”
Ihattaren decided to go back to the Netherlands after the international match in October and took the plane after the Netherlands – Gibraltar. “I entered Ali Dursun’s office the next day, I had been in contact with him for some time,” Ihattaren said of the agent he chose over Raiola. “I said: Ali, I’ve done everything wrong. You have to help me. I first looked to myself. He heard the story and said that I couldn’t possibly be guilty of this. He took me under the arm, is like a kind of a father to me. Mino recently told Studio Voetbal that he was worried, started about the mental aspect and that he no longer had contact with me. Of course not, I am disappointed. A week before my switch to Ali, he wanted to go public make it known to me that I was not wrong.”
Finally, Ihattaren tells about his departure from PSV. The midfielder was frequently in conflict with trainer Roger Schmidt and was eventually sold to Juventus. “It was counting down at the end of August. Everyone at PSV had been asking for weeks when I would leave. Only Toon Gerbrands. Toon and John de Jong (general director and technical director, ed.) have always been very good to me, I am very fond of them grateful They know how I am but under Schmidt I had the feeling that I would even end up in Jong PSV I just wanted to leave but unfortunately it felt like I had to leave PSV through the back door instead of through the front door like Memphis Depay, Steven Bergwijn and Donyell Malen.”