Adel Taarabt interview: Now I have three or four friends, and thats it. My life is clear, and

June 21, 2024

Queens Park Rangers had already won the 2010-11 Championship and had just one game left to play, against Leeds United at home. Even as they waited to hear whether the Football Association would deduct points over the signing of Alejandro Faurlin (they did not), QPR prepared for a party at Loftus Road to celebrate their return to the top flight.

But there was a problem. Adel Taarabt, QPR captain, best player in the Championship, and the main reason QPR had won it, was back at home with his family in Marseille.

Neil Warnock called Taarabt in a panic and told him he had to play. Taarabt pointed out he had already won QPR the league (they were five points clear of Norwich City). Warnock said that, as captain, Taarabt needed to be there to lift the trophy.

So Taarabt rushed to Marseille airport and jumped on the first flight to Heathrow. He landed just before 3pm, and made it to Loftus Road halfway through the first half. (“If it was Gatwick,” he says now, “it would have been impossible.”)

Warnock put him on in the second half for Akos Buzsaky and even though QPR lost 2-1, Taarabt was there at the end, Morocco flag round his shoulders, lifting the trophy with its blue and white ribbons over his head.

That was the high point of the first act of Taarabt’s career: the maverick genius, the swaggering king of W12.

Eleven years on, Taarabt approaches the climax of the third act of his unusual career. He is Benfica’s elder statesman, anchoring the middle of the pitch for Nelson Verissimo’s side. Next Tuesday he will play in a Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool in front of 65,000 people. He says it might well be “the most beautiful game” of his career.

Taarabt, now 32, is a man transformed from the player who dominated the Championship for Warnock, and then helped keep QPR in the Premier League under Mark Hughes. He is stronger, fitter, cleverer and more mature. He is able to look back with some perspective about his journey and the mistakes that he made along the way. He has shed weight, shed hangers-on and replaced his busy London social life with a quieter life in Lisbon. “It’s a different type of life,” he says.

All it took for the penny to drop was for Taarabt to spend his peak years in the wilderness.

The first thing you have to understand about Adel Taarabt is how unimaginably gifted he is. Tottenham’s scouts first watched him playing for France’s under-17 team, alongside Morgan Schneiderlin, Moussa Sissoko, David N’Gog and Gabriel Obertan. Even now the men who watched Taarabt then think he was the most gifted teenager they ever saw.

Damien Comolli had been following Taarabt and when he was at Arsenal he advised Arsene Wenger to sign him. Wenger naturally loved Taarabt and tried to sign him from Lens. Armand Traore, his team-mate from France Under-19s, had just joined Arsenal and advised Taarabt to follow him there. But Comolli had moved to Tottenham by then and convinced Taarabt to go to White Hart Lane instead.

Taarabt had played only two games for Lens when he left for England. In hindsight, he thinks that was a mistake. “My first advice (to myself), if I could come back to my career, I would not have left France that early,” he says. “I played only a few games for the first team when I came to Tottenham. If it was only my decision I would have stayed at least one full season in France, but the club wanted to sell me. I would have loved to make a full season at Lens before leaving.”

The problem was that Taarabt went from being the boy wonder at Lens to being just another kid at Spurs. “In France I was one of the best talents, everyone was protecting me. I arrived in the dressing room at Tottenham, I found myself with Edgar Davids, Robbie Keane, Dimitar Berbatov, it all starts from zero. It was different. It was not easy for young players at Tottenham.”

Martin Jol has never seen a talented player he did not want to pick, and was happy enough to chuck Taarabt in at the start. He made a few substitute appearances under Jol, and a few more under his replacement Juande Ramos, who then froze Taarabt out at the start of the 2008-09 season. Ramos’ replacement, Harry Redknapp, went back to using Taarabt from the bench. In three seasons at Spurs he made 15 appearances, not one from the start. “I was a French guy, not speaking the language,” he says. “And we had three coaches in one and a half years. It was not so easy.”

Taarabt’s on-field career at Tottenham was stop-start but off it it was “non-stop, crazy”

But while Taarabt was struggling to find himself at Spurs, he was starting to enjoy his life in London. He settled in South Kensington (London’s French enclave), and would spend his spare time in Knightsbridge, enjoying the London nightlife. “I lived in London from 18 to 23, and it was like I lived there 10 years,” he says. “Non-stop, crazy.”

Looking back, he is struck by how much freedom he was given. “In England, it was difficult for the guys that come over. They sign you and then leave you by yourself. When I look here at the Benfica academy, at 13 or 14, they are thinking like proper athletes. Me, when I arrived in England, I would train for one or two hours, and then I was by myself. I didn’t have the people around me to tell me this or that.”

What Taarabt needed was a platform, someone to believe in him, and to trust him to win games. What he needed was Neil Warnock. When Taarabt joined QPR on loan, aged 19, Paulo Sousa was still manager there. Then there was Jim Magilton, then Paul Hart and then Mick Harford. But it took the arrival of Warnock in March 2010, trying to keep QPR up, who unlocked Taarabt’s talent.

Warnock realised that Taarabt was his secret weapon to get QPR back into the top flight. All he had to do was sign him permanently and build the team around him. “Tactically he was not one of the best, but on the human side, he gives you the confidence and very positive vibes,” Taarabt says. “He gave me a lot of freedom, just said go and win the games for me, and that’s it.”

In a team of solid pros (Paddy Kenny, Clint Hill, Shaun Derry, Jamie Mackie, Heidar Helguson, etc), Taarabt provided the magic and inspiration to win games — and ultimately promotion — all by himself. Warnock indulged him, placated him, built the team around him, made him captain and staked everything on Taarabt’s ability to get QPR promoted. The bet was paid back in full, as Taarabt produced one of the greatest seasons ever seen in England’s second tier. “QPR is a very special club to me,” he says. “When I arrived it was a very difficult time, but the love they gave me — that’s what I needed and I think that’s why I performed so well for them.”

Taarabt flourished under Warnock at QPR – “he gave me a lot of freedom”

Taarabt is a football obsessive who can remember almost every game he ever played. The one from that season he picks out is at home against Swansea City on Boxing Day 2010: two magical goals and two brilliant assists. But there were so many days like that, and no words can do justice to how good he was. He grew up idolising Zinedine Zidane and you can just about see it: the balance, the touch, the audacity, the strength and the change of pace.

Taarabt got his hands on the Championship trophy in the end, even if he was still crestfallen to miss out on the player of the season award to Kenny. Taarabt stormed out of the awards at the time but now, 11 years on, he can joke about it. “That was crazy,” he says. “I won the Championship player of the season, but I didn’t win this one. I think it was Warnock who wanted to send me a message. Even though Paddy Kenny had a fantastic season, it was impossible for him to win.”

When Joey Barton arrived that summer, life at QPR started to change. In one of his first sessions a Barton tackle on Taarabt forced him out of training. Warnock told Barton not to do it again because Taarabt was the only reason QPR were in the top flight. Barton was given the captaincy from Taarabt too.

Ultimately Taarabt still has good things to say about Barton (“sometimes on the pitch he can do crazy things, but when you speak to him, he’s not so much of a bad guy”). And during the 2011-12 survival season, Taarabt still had his moments. He remembers goals against Arsenal and Spurs that spring, as well as a 3-2 comeback win against Liverpool that started it all off. Taarabt helped keep QPR in the Premier League under Mark Hughes, but by the next season the magic was starting to wear off.

Taarabt’s decline coincided with that of his team, and Harry Redknapp’s QPR were relegated at the end of 2012-13. This was the start of the strange middle period of Taarabt’s career — the lost second act — when he bounced between different clubs sometimes playing, sometimes not playing at all.

During the 2013-14 season, with QPR back in the Championship, Taarabt was loaned out: first to Jol’s Fulham and then to Clarence Seedorf’s Milan, where he played alongside Kaka, Robinho and the rest. At the end of that loan Milan wanted to keep him but QPR, in Taarabt’s words, were “asking crazy things” to do the deal. It never happened and Taarabt had to stay at Loftus Road in 2014-15. “I was not happy,” he says. “Obviously I wanted to stay in Milan.”

Taarabt said in England he was asked only to perform on the pitch (Photo: Getty Images)

Taarabt was a sad fringe presence that season. Redknapp said that he was not fit enough to play (he said “three stone overweight”) and he was used mainly as a substitute. Just a few years on from being the king of Loftus Road, Taarabt started just three league games that year (all of them defeats), and QPR were relegated again. Taarabt’s contract was terminated in the summer and he signed for Benfica.

The problem, as Taarabt now admits, is that even at the age of 26, he was nowhere near ready to play for a top club when he arrived in Lisbon. He had been indulged by English football, allowed to eat what he wanted, train how he wanted, and play how he wanted. Benfica had higher standards, and Taarabt could not meet them.

“I came with a different mentality,” Taarabt admits. “When you come from the Premier League, it’s different. The only thing in England they ask you is to perform on the pitch, and I came with that mentality. I was thinking when I came here it would be the same, and I found it difficult because it was not the case.”

In Taarabt’s first season and a half at Benfica, he did not play one single minute for Rui Vitoria’s first team. What should have been his peak years and his dream move were going to waste. In the second half of the second season he was loaned out to Genoa, where he did at least make six appearances, and one start — his first for two years and four days. The next season he went back to Genoa and even started to play regularly again, starting 18 Serie A games, reminding the world that there was still a good player in there if he could just unlock it.

Back at Benfica for the 2018-19 season, his fourth season there, the penny dropped. Those wasted years were turned into motivation for Taarabt to finally start behaving like a top player. So much so that now, looking back, Taarabt sees his wilderness years as a worthwhile learning experience in the end.

“It was a good thing that happened to me,” he says. “I became more calm. I started to think what could I do better? So I changed my life. I gave more time to my family. I became fully professional. I changed the way I eat, I changed the way I sleep. I feel better, fitter, with the intensity of training we have. I go to the gym every morning before training.” Chips and sauces were out, fish, salad and vegetables were in. Having lived such an intense life in London, the quieter life in Lisbon started to appeal.

“Now I believe more what people used to tell me. When I was younger, I didn’t give them any time, I was thinking I was always right. I just loved playing football, all the extra things, I didn’t believe in them. But now I know these things help you to make the difference. Being healthy, sleeping well, all these things. But when you’re 20, you don’t feel this.”

Taarabt had a busy social life in London and has always loved to be generous and entertaining. But when he stopped being a star, he found that those hangers-on started to fade away. “My father always told me this was the best thing that happened to me. Because now I was not going to see so many friends, and I was going to see the real people around me. When you play, you’re shining, everybody is your friend. When you’re a bit down, you see the real ones. Now I have three or four friends, and that’s it. My life is clear, and it’s good.”

Taarabt does not have regrets as such, but it is only natural that they might creep in. “Sometimes I think if I was with that mentality when I was 20, it could have been different,” he says. Different how? “I don’t know. But I’m sure I would not have lost three or four years of my career.”

Taarabt could only do so much. He needed an ally to get his career back on track. And he found it in the form of Bruno Lage. Taarabt started the 2018-19 season back at Benfica B, now coached by Lage, who had returned from a stint as Carlos Carvalhal’s assistant at Swansea City.

Lage was “shocked” to have a player as gifted as Taarabt at his disposal. “He told me he didn’t understand how come I was in this situation,” Taarabt remembers. “When he arrived, we didn’t know each other, but I was training very well and he was happy.”

The challenge for Lage and Taarabt was to find a new role for him on the pitch. Taarabt had adored Zidane and Juan Roman Riquelme as a boy and always wanted to play as a traditional No 10. At QPR, Warnock had allowed him to do just that, with no defensive responsibilities. (Warnock even banned Taarabt from going into the QPR half, and fined any players who gave him the ball there.)

But football has changed. “Players like Neymar, you don’t see so much in the game now,” Taarabt says sadly. “I miss seeing that type of player. If you ask me which position I prefer, it is behind the striker, No 10. But football has changed. You don’t see many teams now that play with a 10. I had to adapt.”

Taarabt, once a No 10 with freedom, now operates at the base of Benfica’s midfield

So Lage decided to do what other managers did not dare, and play Taarabt in central midfield. “It’s a different area, where you cannot risk so much. In England I was free, and the only thing asked of me was to create. Now I work on both sides, trying to create and defend as well. I have to be very disciplined. I don’t arrive around the box, I do get there, but I am more the third-last pass. It is more about making the team play.”

But the most important moment of all came in January 2019 when Rui Vitoria was sacked as first team manager, and Lage replaced him. Vitoria never picked Taarabt for the first team, but when Lage got the top job he did. So in March 2019, Taarabt finally made his debut for the Benfica first team, almost four years after he first signed. He helped Benfica to complete a season in which they won the league.

That summer, as a sign of his loyalty to Lage and to Benfica, Taarabt negotiated a new contract on a reduced salary, which is now in its penultimate year. “After that first year, I wanted to make a commitment,” he says. “Because I felt the club was amazing. They always supported me, even through everything. It was the right thing to do.”

Since then Taarabt has been enjoying this surprising third act of his back-to-front career, anchoring the midfield for Benfica, running the game, and giving the young players the benefit of his own experience in the game. He was a regular for two full seasons and even if he is not playing quite so much this year, he is still enjoying his life as a senior pro at one of the most prestigious clubs in Europe, playing in the Champions League, in front of 65,00 people.

At the end of this season Taarabt will be 33 and he knows he is “closer to the finish than to the start” of his career. But he does not want to have too many regrets.

“I see some people making comments that I could have been one of the best players, but I don’t think like this. Because I enjoyed my time, when I was 18, 19, 20. When I was 18 I was already at Tottenham, at QPR I had great moments, I played for AC Milan which is a great club, and I played Champions League with them. I played with some Ballon d’Or winners, I played with Luka Modric, I played with Kaka. OK, maybe it could have been better, but I am still very proud of the career that I had.”

(Images: Getty Images; design: Sam Richardson)

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