Late afternoon in Florence and the old vinaio around Piazza del Duomo are starting to fill up with the people leaving work. The queues around the Uffizi are finally beginning to subside and it has reached the point of the day when the stalls start coming down at Sant’Ambrogio fish market and the floors are soaked clean.

On a rooftop bar, with the Duomo one side and the river Arno the other, Micah Richards is looking over his new city and he is wearing the contented smile of someone who likes what he sees. Richards is only a few weeks into his new life with Fiorentina but it quickly becomes clear that he is embracing Italy and wants to stay in the city of the Viola beyond his season-long loan. So quickly, in fact, he has already said as much in the time it takes to meet at his hotel reception and wait for the elevator to take us four floors up to all that picture-postcard scenery.

Juventus had wanted him. Internazionale, too. Yet Fiorentina, fourth in Serie A last season, made him feel the most wanted. His debut came on Thursday night, setting up the third goal in a 3-0 Europa League win over Guingamp, and while Manchester City take on Chelsea on Sunday he will be preparing to face Atalanta. Ashley Cole, now at Roma, has already been in touch and it does not need long in Richards’s company to realise he has no plans to return to England, to use the famous Ian Rush quote, complaining that his time in Italy “was like living in a foreign country”.

His Italian lessons start in the next few weeks and, in the meantime, he is muddling through. He tells the story of one of his first team meetings under Vincenzo Montella. “There are tactics on the board. He’s telling us how he wants us to play. I’m just sitting there thinking [he puts on a blank face]: ‘I don’t know what you’re saying’. There are seven of us English-speakers sitting there [another blank face]: ‘What’s he just said there, then?’ I joke and say: ‘Come on, he played at Fulham once, surely he can tell us in English.’ So the other lads help out and it becomes: ‘You … player … shoot!’ And I’m going: ‘Yeah! Yeah! I’ve got you. Player! Shoot! I know shoot!’ So I suppose that could improve a bit.”

Italian, he has been told, is a difficult language to pick up but he is eager to give it a go. “It’s so touristy here a lot of people speak English anyway, but I do want to interact properly. It’s too easy sticking to English and I always wanted to learn another language anyway. I just imagined before that it would be French or Spanish.” Yet he is quite accustomed to needing the odd bit of translation from his latter days at Manchester City where, at the last count, there were only four Englishmen standing. At City, Richards says, most of the dressing-room conversation was in Spanish. “Vincent Kompany tried to speak to the boys at one point and said they had to learn English but there are so many Spaniards and South Americans they just tend to slip into their own language. James Milner has actually been having Spanish lessons for a couple of years.”

Richards, 26, thinks it is “sad” that City have lost their English core. They had wanted him to stay, offering him a new contract. “But was that the right thing for me? Financially, it would have been. It would have been the easy choice to stay in England. I don’t speak Italian and I don’t really have any mates in Florence. I just thought it was the right thing to move here. It’s a good league, a beautiful place, the lifestyle is unbelievable – just look at the views – and the people here are so friendly.”

He is not here for the sightseeing, though. Richards nods with appreciation as he goes through his new team-mates: Guiseppe Rossi (“the star player”), Juan Cuadrado (“unbelievable”), Mario Gomez (“strong, a real handful”) and a Chilean he did not know much of before, Matías Fernández (“honestly, this guy is ridiculous”). “They finished fourth last year but they want to push higher and that was important for me. I’d say to any player to come and try it. But I’m enjoying it most of all because I think we have a team that can challenge.”

But it was a wrench. Richards’s association with City goes back to the age of 14, when he arrived for a trial from Oldham Athletic and remembers being blown away by Shaleum Logan “playing up front, dribbling around everyone, and I was thinking: ’Oh my God, he’s unbelievable.’ I wasn’t used to the pace of the game. It took me six months to catch up.”

Logan, five months his senior, made only one appearance for City while Richards, at 18,. took Rio Ferdinand’s record as the youngest defender ever to play for England and played almost 250 times for City. “I’m sure I’ll be there in some capacity when I’ve finished playing as well, maybe a coaching or scouting role. I don’t think the story is finished yet, definitely not.”

Yet there are glimpses of hurt. In 2012, when City won their first title of the modern era, Richards was nominated for their player of the year award and described by Gareth Bale as the hardest opponent he had ever faced. The following October, he went to clear the ball in a home game against Swansea, miskicked and knew immediately something was wrong. “I actually felt something move around in my knee. I thought: ‘Oh please no.’ I started running and five minutes later my knee just locked on me.” His damaged cartilage required an operation and a seven-month layoff gave Pablo Zabaleta his chance to cement his place as first-choice right-back. Roberto Mancini was sacked at the end of the season and Richards never felt he had Manuel Pellegrini’s trust.

“The lowest moment was against Watford [in the FA Cup in January this year]. At half-time we were losing two-nil. I really don’t want to pass the blame to other players but everyone could see I wasn’t the problem. But Pellegrini brought me and [Jack] Rodwell off at half-time. I thought: ‘I’m becoming a scapegoat here.’ I’ve not always played well for City, but I’d never been the scapegoat, coming off at half-time when in my head I thought I was having a decent game. It was weird, unnatural, it had never happened to me before and it felt like no matter what I did it wasn’t good enough any more. That was a turning point. The manager did try to explain it to me. He said he didn’t want to rush my fitness, but I wasn’t playing in the Premier League, I wasn’t playing in the Champions League, so at least, in the FA Cup against Watford at home, give me 90 minutes. After that, my belief was shattered.”

Micah Richards is looking forward to making his Serie A debut for Fiorentina, possibly at Atalanta on Sunday. Photograph: AGF/Rex

Sitting here now, he reveals that Juventus tried to sign him in 2012 only for Mancini to block the transfer, and it is very apparent he did not belong to the group of players who wanted the Italian out. “It’s a tough one with Mancini. He was hard. I’m used to that hard talking, that mentality, Stuart Pearce, people saying it how it is. I’m used to managers absolutely caning me: ‘If you don’t do this, you’re off!’ Now, though, it’s a different world. If a manager says something out of line to a player, they will sulk and moan about it. It’s ridiculous.

“That was Mancini, though. He would say exactly what he was thinking, rather than the best thing to say. He called me ‘Swarovski’, the crystals, because he said I was made of glass. I was coming back from injury and someone asked him in a press conference if he was happy with how I’d done. ‘No!’ he said. ‘No! He didn’t play well at all.’ He was never happy enough and, to a certain extent, that’s what helped us win the league. He was always wanting better. It’s a good thing and a bad thing and maybe it was part of his downfall but I can say only positive things about him because, for me, he was great. That was the best football of my career.”

He is staying at a hotel just a curve of the Arno away from Ponte Vecchio and it is a steady stream of people who want their photograph taken with “Meesta Richards”. A few days ago, Richards popped out to buy an iPad. By the time he returned, he had been weighed down with several bags of welcome gifts. The locals, he says, could hardly have done more to help him settle in.

Mario Balotelli has been on the phone, too. Richards sums up his friend as “crazy, but one of the nicest guys ever” and he can laugh now about that infamous training ground scrap at City. “We were playing five-a-side and losing because Mario, being Mario, wasn’t tracking his runner. I was like: ‘Mario, fuck’s sake, track your man.’ But you know what he’s like. He started swearing in Italian and waving his hands. I said: ‘Mario I’m not in the mood today.’ I lost my head, he lost his, and it was just bonkers. You couldn’t get away with anything at City because there were always photographers everywhere.”

And the Mancini-Balotelli fight? “People say it started because of a late challenge but it wasn’t that. Mancini wanted to explain something. Mario wasn’t interested and then it was just madness. I just left them to it because they were like father and son, rather than manager and player. My favourite Mario story is when he went into the school to speak to the bully. He just does what he wants, doesn’t he?”

‘Until Roy Hodgson has gone I don’t see myself getting in for England again.’ Photograph: Michele Borzoni/TerraProject

Richards has 13 England caps but he does not envisage any way back into Roy Hodgson’s thinking. That boat sailed when Hodgson overlooked him for Euro 2012 and Richards was so upset he did not want to go on the standby list. Hodgson has never considered him since and Richards is convinced that “until he’s gone I don’t see myself getting in”.

But what if Gazzetta dello Sport is giving him nine out of 10 every week and Fiorentina are having another strong season, would he expect Hodgson to come over to watch him? “No chance,” he says. “Has he even been to Swansea? The England manager should be going around every ground but I read he hadn’t even been to Swansea.”

He is talking about Nathan Dyer. “I’ve played with him at under-19s, I know him really well and I’ve talked to him. He’s gutted. It’s a pleasure to play for your country, an honour, but then you see players who are not performing well and not getting picked on merit but because they are his players.”

Richards also wonders if Hodgson is guilty of double standards when Ben Foster “can retire for a year then ‘if you want to come back in, here you go, feel free, even though there are other keepers.’”

To clarify, he is laughing as he says that, and it is without malice. But he does have a serious point. “He [Foster] is one of Hodgson’s players, isn’t he? He had him at West Brom and every manager has his favourites, so there is no point moaning or being upset about it. The only thing that hurt me was 2011-12 was my best season. Kyle Walker had broken his toe and I thought – and the majority of people thought – I would be the right choice if I could win the league and potentially win player of the year at City, maybe the hardest squad in the league to do that. I’ve dealt with it now but at the time it was tough.” Tuscany, they say, is the birthplace of the Renaissance. Richards is hoping for one of his own.