'I give 100% in my football but I like to have fun off the pitch too'

Alex Iwobi on challenging for Europe with Fulham, releasing music with Ramz, fashion and charity work

- Ed Aarons

Forget the numerous occasions when Alex Iwobi has played at the Emirates Stadium, Goodison Park and Craven Cottage, or even when he faced Ivory Coast in Abidjan in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations final. The most nervous he has been was in Dubai this summer - and not when the dog-loving Fulham midfielder headed out for a walk with a lion, which he did in June at a local zoo. It was a request from Ramz, the British rapper Iwobi has collaborated with on Hop Out, the latest single the Nigeria international has released under his pseudonym 17, to join him on stage for a live performance that really struck fear into him.

"I thought: 'I'm not sure yet. I'm just not sure yet," Iwobi says. "But maybe in the near future I might start. I've done one live performance which felt a bit weird - there was a live band playing the drums and I had to literally use it as an instrument, which felt crazy, but I enjoyed it. It's all about timing..."

On the evidence of Iwobi's appearance on Uefa's Champions League Off Pitch show on YouTube that was recorded in April when Hop Out was released, he could be on to something. It has been some time since footballers releasing singles was a semi-regular occurrence - think Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle's duet on Diamond Lights in 1987 or Ian Wright's Do the Right Thing in 1993. But music is in the blood for Iwobi, who started out freestyling on the back of the bus on his way to school in Essex, progressed to his own studio at home, and whose uncle Jay-Jay Okocha, the Bolton and Nigeria legend, released a 1994 single I Am Am JJ.