Pablo Fornals says he “fulfilled a dream” playing for West Ham, but it was the right “time to leave” in an interview with Offsiders, which was relayed on Estadio Deportivo. 

West Ham fans have been reminded of their love for Pablo Fornals after he was seen greeting fans who went to a Real Betis match to meet their former favourite Hammer. He has recently spoken about his controversial exit from East London and he explained why it happened.

Pablo Fornals signed for West Ham from Villarreal in the summer of 2019, he spent more than 4 years at the club making 203 appearances scoring 23 goals and making 18 assists. He was a crucial part of the 22/23 Conference League winning run, scoring an unforgettable goal in the semi-final against AZ Alkmaar.

Fornals said: “In the Premier League, I had fulfilled a dream, but when you are no longer so happy when you get home, they notice it too. My son had a hard time adapting to the school there… We saw that it was time to leave and how lucky we were to arrive at Betis.”

Just before the start of the 23/24 season, West Ham triggered a year extension in Pablo Fornals’ contract. He said: “I arrived one day, and they told me that they had signed me for another year. That’s it, I saw myself there another year, but at Christmas, offers came and we wanted to return to Spain.

“The Betis thing happened, but it almost didn’t happen. The transfer did not arrive, West Ham made a mistake in some information and the operation was not completed, the same thing happened to Benhrama and me. It didn’t agree with the data that Betis sent, and it wasn’t done. It’s already been February 2nd, with the market closed, because UEFA allows it. It was shown that there was no bad faith, just an error and in the application, it was seen that West Ham tried to replicate the data 10 or 11 times.”

Luckily for Fornals, despite the problems, the deal went through. He said: “I was at the stadium, there had been a match that day. It was 11pm. I said goodbye to my teammates, the coach made a beautiful speech, we were all excited, hugging each other, and I was crying like I’ve rarely cried in my life… and it was 00:00 [12am] without the signing being completed, so in theory I had to train the next day with West Ham. Fortunately, UEFA saw that the numbers worked out and authorised it.”