Cheikhou Kouyaté has never been afraid to suffer for his art. West Ham United’s new midfielder is used to it and he has been making sacrifices for a long time, ever since he left his family home in Senegal as a teenager and moved to Europe on his own. He has learned to be tough and hard work feels like the most natural thing in the world for a player whose soft voice belies a steely determination not to waste a single drop of his ability.

Kouyaté cannot stress precisely how much it means to him to be playing in England, so much so that there is a strong chance that he will ask someone to pinch him when he walks out against Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday afternoon, just to make sure it really is happening. “To play in England was a dream since I was a kid,” he says. “It became an obsession. I knew I had to come, no matter what.”

After six years at Anderlecht, where he won four league titles, Kouyaté knew it was time to leave Belgium. Valencia were interested but West Ham offered £7m and were able to convince the 24-year-old to start a new life in London.

Kouyaté’s journey before that had not been easy and he was plagued by homesickness after joining FC Brussels, where he spent a season before signing for Anderlecht. “I left Senegal at the age of 17, first to go to Greece, then to France, and then to Belgium,” Kouyaté says. “It was so difficult. But my grandmother on the telephone, the president of my club, my mum, they told me to stay put. After three months I really wanted to go back to Senegal and stop playing football.

“Because it was the first time I had left my country without my family, I had nothing and was completely on my own. It was really cold. It was the first time I had seen snow. I asked for advice from my agent, my family, all the people who love me. After that I told myself: ‘OK, I am going to stay put.’ I was on my own a lot of the time, but I got used to it. It was then my mental strength began to increase, I became tougher.

“I saw no one, I was all alone in Europe. I had only my family – by telephone. My agent was there and kept urging me on. My mentality became very strong. Now I feel I can go anywhere.”

Kouyaté hopes that his mother and brother will fly to London to see him soon. “Maybe in December,” he says. “The problem for December is the cold – neither of them likes the cold. Maybe we’ll have to wait until March.” He laughs when he thinks about his family struggling to cope with London in winter and it is a sign that he is warming to life at West Ham. It helps that another Senegalese midfielder, Mohamed Diamé, is already around to help him acclimatise.

“I thought it would be difficult but it has actually been fine,” Kouyaté says. “Although it has only been one month, it feels like longer. I thought it would be difficult mainly because of the language. It is getting better every day. I will start an advanced course next week. In two or three months, it will be perfect. I have already learned a lot of common football words – it is not as difficult as I thought.”

Kouyaté asked El Hadji Diouf, a former Sam Allardyce player with Bolton, what to expect from his new manager. “He told me that Sam was like a father figure to him,” he says. “He said I will improve my game under him. He said I mustn’t hold back, I just need to work hard, concentrate in training and be serious about my game. He will be there for all his players, so I have nothing to fear.”

The inevitable comparisons with Patrick Vieira do not bother him. “When I started in Belgium I played 10 matches and people started comparing me with him,” Kouyaté says. “It was an immense pleasure to be compared to such a fantastic player because Vieira was a role model for us Senegalese. He made us dream, and aspire to achieve similar things. I know it will be tough. Now it is up to me [to show] that I deserve the comparison. I hope to achieve just a bit of what he achieved.”

Kouyaté knows what he has to do. “I must work hard in training, suffer even,” he says. “Words don’t achieve anything. I have to show what I can do on the pitch. Now the ball is in my court.”