The former Liverpool winger believes he has unfinished business in the Premier League and wants to help Fulham survive

In the week that social media users have been busy comparing pictures of themselves to those taken a decade ago in the #10YearChallenge, the return of Ryan Babel to English football feels timely. Signed from Ajax in 2007 by Rafael Benítez’s Liverpool for £11.5m after he had become the youngest goalscorer for the Netherlands in almost seven decades, the 32-year-old joined Fulham this week on a short-term deal until the end of the season following a nomadic and sometimes controversial career that has taken him to Germany, the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Turkey since leaving Anfield.

Babel has certainly aged well in the intervening years, having revitalised his career with Besiktas and won back his place in Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands squad that will face England in the Nations League semi-finals this summer.

But while he appears relaxed as he prepares to show off his distinctive dyed-red hairstyle on Sunday for his new club against Tottenham at Craven Cottage, there is clearly a burning ambition to prove some people in this country wrong.

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“From the outside I didn’t change so much,” he reflects with a smile, in reference to his Instagram post this week with the caption “22 year old joins @fulhamfc”. “I’ve done so much in my career but a little part of me feels I still have unfinished business here in the Premier League. For me it is a good challenge and I want to take this chance to see how I do now.”

Babel is honest and open about his experiences at Liverpool, where he scored 22 goals in nearly 150 appearances before leaving in 2011 for Hoffenheim. He became increasingly marginalised under Benítez, Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish and feels the club failed to manage his development correctly after he moved at the age of 20.

“I’ve said in earlier interviews maybe I should have stayed one or two more years in Holland,” Babel says. “I had been living with my parents so it was the first time living abroad and by myself. There are lot of things coming at you at the same time – different country, different culture. You’re basically by yourself and you have to make sure you deal with it as good as possible. That wasn’t always the case [with me].”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ryan Babel during the Netherlands’ Nations League match against Germany in October. He won his place back in the squad after showing fine form for Besiktas. Photograph: VI-Images via Getty Images

He adds: “There were a lot of things that bothered me, that were written about me, like my mentality was not supposed to be good. I was young and I did a lot of things besides football, whether it was being involved a little with music.

I didn't realise the press was lurking on social media to see if you made a mistake. I have got in a bit of trouble Ryan Babel

“Then they took that part way out of proportion, that I was being more busy with music than with football. Of course not. I wanted to develop well and – as they promised me back then before I joined – just to be given the guidance I needed to become a better player. That didn’t happen and for a lot of different reasons I didn’t fulfil my potential I guess.”

A few weeks before his departure, Babel became one of the first players to fall foul of the Football Association’s new rules governing social media when he was fined £10,000 for posting a photoshopped image of referee Howard Webb wearing a Manchester United shirt on Twitter. Webb had awarded Dimitar Berbatov a penalty in United’s 1-0 victory and Babel decided to express his frustration online as the team coach made its way back to Liverpool. “I posted it and after not even 30 minutes, it was all over CNN, Sky Sports. I didn’t expect that to happen …” he says. “Back then, I did not realise the press was lurking on social media to see if you made a mistake. Actually, I have got myself in a bit of trouble abroad.”

Babel spent 18 months in Germany before returning to Ajax, where he played alongside Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen. He was “sceptical” whether the Denmark midfielder would make the grade in England due to his lack of physicality and admits he has been pleasantly surprised to see his emergence.

Yet while Eriksen has flourished under Mauricio Pochettino, Babel’s decision to move to UAE side Al Ain in 2015 at the age of 28 after a short spell in Turkey seemed a huge waste of his talent. He was demoted to the reserves after posting an angry message in which he appeared to criticise the club’s supporters before terminating his contract and returning home.

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“There is still a little case going on, so I don’t know if I am allowed to speak too much about it,” he says. “As soon as I did it, the board were like: ‘Yeah, we have a problem, we cannot let you play any more. We need to find a solution.’ I was like: ‘Oh, OK.’ It was a big misunderstanding.”

Babel insists his use of social media has not affected his career in a negative way. “You have to be clever with it,” he says. “Now social media is so easy for fans to approach football players and as a football player you see those things very quick and easy. You try to avoid all the noise but sometimes it is difficult not to respond to it. I guess that is being a human being.”

Babel’s only previous experience of a relegation dogfight came in 2016 when he scored four times in five starts to help Deportivo La Coruna avoid relegation. But while he is intent on helping Fulham’s great escape under Claudio Ranieri, his future beyond this season remains up in the air.

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“To be honest, I’m not really making decisions that are stereotypical to what people normally expect. I like to explore the world,” he says. “From every little territory I’ve been, I’ve picked something up, things that I could use to better my game, to take with me, and the rest I left behind.”