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Samir Nasri has denied being a trouble-maker and claimed his reputation as being a difficult player to handle stems from not playing the media's game. Nasri, currently on loan at Sevilla from Manchester City, has been classed "a problem player" ever since emerging into the first team at hometown club Marseille. A well-publicised rift with former Arsenal teammate William Gallas added substance to that reputation, while a foul-mouthed outburst towards a journalist at Euro 2012 further fuelled his negative public image. Didier Deschamps suggested Nasri had been left out of France's 2014 World Cup squad because he would disrupt the team spirit if he were not playing, and the midfielder reacted by announcing his international retirement. Nasri, 29, has since repeated his attacks on Deschamps' character, but speaking to Onze Mondial, he denied he could ever have led a dressing-room rebellion. "As far as I know, I'm not the brains behind a sect. Cause chaos in the dressing room, how can I do that?" he said. "So me, Samir Nasri, I'm going to go into the France dressing room. There will be 23 players. I'm going to manage to 'turn' the 12 players not playing? I'm going to say to them: 'Come on, let's f--- things up, we're not playing!' "But it's really a load of rubbish. What a load of rubbish! And people believe it, that's the worst thing." The French Football Federation imposed a three-match international ban on Nasri after his four-letter tirade in 2012, but the midfielder actually endured a 14-month exile from Les Bleus as Deschamps refrained from calling him up. L'Equipe had branded Nasri in 2012 a "racaille" -- meaning "scum" and a term infamously used by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to describe the reputedly quasi-criminal elements of the troubled suburbs of France's major cities. Nasri, who grew up on the outskirts of Marseille, admitted his unwillingness to deal with the media had not helped his cause. "You have to be a hypocrite. You have to play the guy who's always happy," Nasri said. "Of course the team comes first, but you have the right to be unhappy. "If you're happy, it's means you're not a competitor, that you have no ambition. If you want to be loved by everyone, by the journalists, you have to come into the mixed zone with a smile and speak. But I don't want to. "What's wrong? I go home, I'm grumpy with my dad, my mum, my brothers, my sister, and when I have a girlfriend, with my girlfriend because I have lost a game. And you journalists want to ask stupid questions, and I have to come there with a smile? No, that's not possible."
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