‘Even though that clip shows I got past him, it wasn’t as easy as it may have looked,” says Ola Aina. The Nottingham Forest defender is recalling the moment during a defeat against Manchester City a fortnight ago when he took on and beat Kyle Walker in a foot race. It’s a feat not many players, including Kylian Mbappé, can claim to have matched in recent times and Aina says his phone has been “frantic” since a tweet from the Premier League that has amassed 22,000 likes went viral.
“I remember when it happened I saw him and thought: ‘I might as well just try it’ – and I put everything into it,” says the 27-year-old Nigeria defender, who has made 19 starts for Forest after joining on a one-year deal from Torino last summer. “Afterwards he said something like: ‘You’re pretty quick’ and ‘You caught me flat-footed.’ But he was very chilled about it. He’s done the same thing to other players so many times.”
