As a torchbearer for Frank Lampard’s energetic and pugnacious Everton side, Alex Iwobi is attracting a weight of favourable attention.
Barely a year ago, the midfielder was pulling a hat and snood over his features to escape recognition when joining friends’ seven-a-side matches for the purpose of retaining an endearing love of football.
Iwobi was a lightning rod for supporter discontent: an emblem, in the opinion of disenchanted Evertonians, of a poorly-judged, profligate recruitment strategy.
The perception of a hasty piece of business heightened as Iwobi flitted in and out of the team under multiple managers following a £34m move from Arsenal in the closing hours of the summer 2019 transfer window.
“Previous managers told me to keep it simple, to play one-or-two touch and let those who were more creative, create the chances,” Iwobi tells i. “Now I have the licence to express myself and go forwards.”
To the question of whether Lampard was the first Goodison boss to remove the straitjacket, Iwobi responds: “I like to express myself in training. He told me to play the way I train. So, to put it another way, yes.”
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“I can deal with negativity much better now I have grown up,” Iwobi says. “When I was younger, I didn’t know how to handle those things.”
Iwobi’s means of refuge – “I completely switch off from football, I want my own space and thoughts, I don’t like to talk or have someone telling me what to do” – smacks of someone whose relationship with his sport grew strained, but that is not so.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this,” begins Iwobi, “but I would play football with my friends, especially when I wasn’t in the team.
“Little games, maybe twice a week, just to enjoy it. I never lost my love for football, even though I saw all the negativity.
“We played at a place in Manchester. I always wore a hat and snood, otherwise people would have recognised me. There were about 16 of us. At first, I knew about five people, but once I went regularly, I got to know everyone. It was good fun.”
Iwobi was offered a way out of Everton at the beginning of this year.
He didn’t form a connection with Lampard’s predecessor, Rafael Benitez – “he said to me, ‘I know it must be hard with the fans getting on your back, but that’s how football is’” – and a red card in Nigeria’s Africa Cup of Nations last-16 defeat by Tunisia in January plonked the tin hat on a rotten period.
A temporary move to a club on the continent was lined up and Everton were hardly falling over themselves to keep a player deemed ill-suited for a high-stakes relegation battle.
“It felt like everyone wanted me to go,” Iwobi says. “They said, ‘If you want to play football, you would be better off on loan’.
“It was like, ‘You are not in our plans, try to prove yourself elsewhere’. I said I would rather take my chances and stay. I felt I had something to give and wanted to show my ability.
“The supporters were probably thinking, ‘We are better off getting someone who can do the job’. I was told in the past I wasn’t good enough. When I hear that it motivates me to try to prove my point.”
Lampard noted Iwobi’s astonishing running capacity, married to an innate amenability, and alighted on a midfield position for the 26-year-old soon after his appointment on 31 January.
Iwobi played every minute of Everton’s final 12 matches last season, displaying reserves of courage and determination and endurance that equally confounded and thrilled formerly sceptical supporters.
All summer, he was kept company by thoughts of the imperative of transferring that dynamic form into a new campaign.
If anything, Iwobi raised the bar. He is ever present and flourishing in a new-look central trio with summer additions Amadou Onana and Idrissa Gueye, a pair Iwobi calls “midfield monsters”.
Iwobi has six assists – a skilful flick in a crowded penalty area for Dwight McNeil to score against Crystal Palace a fortnight ago spoke of the football intellect Lampard speedily identified in the player – and is “consistently running the furthest” among his teammates.
— Everton (@Everton) October 22, 2022
@dwightmcneil
@alexiwobi
That one-two…pic.twitter.com/TnYc2hoAZY
“After last season, I thought, ‘I have proved myself, now I have to keep it going’,” says Iwobi, whose ritual of drinking orange Lucozade before matches has been belatedly noticed by colleagues “because I am actually playing”.
“The gaffer has given me the confidence to express myself,” he continues.
“I am trying to do something in every game that makes people go, ‘Oh, wow’. That’s been my aim since I was young playing with friends.”
Iwobi nevertheless wants to refine “my tactical discipline off the ball”.
“I am quietly getting better but there is room for improvement,” he adds.
“It helps that Idrissa and Onana and [centre-backs] James Tarkowski and Conor Coady are always telling me where I should be on the pitch.”
Lampard immediately orchestrated a change of mood at Everton, publicly fighting the club’s corner, restoring resilience and aggression to the team, and advocating a joined-up recruitment policy.
The internal messaging, says Iwobi, is far removed from that of previous regimes.
“[He’s told us] this is a fresh start, that we are better players than we showed last season,” Iwobi adds.
“We go into every game knowing we can create chances and defend strongly. With our squad, we should be aiming for Europe.”
Measuring progress, perhaps inevitably following prolonged stagnation, is tracking a seesawing graph.
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“The mindset is completely different this season,” Iwobi says. “Previously [after defeat], heads might have gone down. Now, we are ready to go again… to fight and prove a point.”
It is indicative of Iwobi’s positive outlook that he is striving to emulate two of the Premier League’s elite performers.
“I look at players like Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva and what they do for Manchester City,” he says. “That is what I would like to contribute. I don’t just want an assist or goal every five or 10 games. I always want to get on the ball and feel I can influence games. I don’t have to keep it simple.
“Even if something doesn’t come off, the fans and players acknowledge I am trying to help our team win.”
Those team-mates who witnessed Iwobi’s struggles are enjoying the resurgence of a unanimously popular figure.
“They say it is nice I am getting the recognition I deserve,” Iwobi says. “Seamus [Coleman] would put his arm around me to say, ‘Don’t worry, your time will come’. They know how hard I worked and what I was going through.”
Iwobi plans to “stay sharp” during the forthcoming World Cup and insists a relentless schedule when the Premier League resumes next month “is no problem for me… I am young and have a lot to give”.
He terms Everton a “proper family club” and is a self-confessed converted Evertonian. “Although, I am not quite a Scouser yet,” Iwobi laughs.
He would, however, like to extend a contract that expires in June 2024. “I want to win as many things as I can with this club,” Iwobi says. “That is why I came here, the club was very ambitious and it still is. I’d like to stay.”
The sentiment will be enthusiastically greeted by the Gwladys Street loyalists, underlining the transformation of a footballer who not long ago would hide his face just to get a game.
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