Antoine Semenyo has revealed his former teammates have been jokingly threatening to kick him when he returns to Bournemouth with Manchester City’s title dreams on the line.
The January signing set up a potential treble for Pep Guardiola’s team by scoring the winner in Saturday’s FA Cup final against Chelsea.
Now he goes back to his old club for the first time since his £64m move after receiving plenty of messages from his friends in Andoni Iraola’s team.
“I still speak to them every day,” the winger said. “They’ve been giving me a lot of crap, just like they’re going to kick me and this and that but it’ll be good to see them all.
“It won’t be weird going back. It’ll be good to see everyone again. And obviously, it’s going to be a tough game.”
Bournemouth are on the longest unbeaten run in Europe’s top five leagues, after going 16 games without defeat, and have their own ambitions of Champions League qualification.
And their form since Semenyo’s departure led the City player to laugh that he was holding them back.
“They haven’t [lost], I was the problem,” he said. “I am happy they are doing so well and hopefully they get into Europe too.”
Semenyo reflected on the backheel flick he scored in the FA Cup final, adding: “A lot of improvisation there. Just got a good contact on it. And yeah, it went in the net. So I’m happy.”
It was something he had worked on in training. “A couple of times,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve got to improvise, you try it in training and see what happens and luckily it worked today.”
Semenyo has already won the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup in his brief City career and he said: “It’s been surreal. Everything’s just happened so quickly. But again, when you come to the team in January, you have to adapt as quick as you can and do the best for the team.”
