Alex Song would call home and tell his wife Olivia and friends that life at Rubin Kazan was good, that the club were going places and that he was happy. What they did not know was that Song was speaking to them from a dark room at the training ground, with no house to go back to, no income and no hope of playing football again in Russia. His only friends were his laptop and his mobile telephone.

“I couldn’t tell people for a while that it was not good, I had to say everything was OK because I didn’t want them to worry,” said Song. “I just had to be positive and not make other people feel bad as well, particularly my wife and two boys back in London.”

Song, who spent six years with Arsenal and had two loan spells at West Ham, moved to Russia in 2016, when his Barcelona contract expired. Rubin had sold the club to him by claiming they were going places under a bright coach by the name of Javi Gracia and with an expensively assembled group of new players who also included Yann M’Vila.

But the promises soon started to ring hollow, as the house Song was meant to live in never materialised and the club eventually moved him out of a hotel into the training ground, where he and former France international M’Vila lived for the best part of a year.