Ryan Babel believed former team-mate Christian Eriksen would not be a success in the Premier League because he was “too soft”.
Babel has just signed for Fulham on a deal until the end of the season and played with the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder at Ajax.
“I was very sceptical in the beginning because we played together for a year at Ajax in 2012,” Babel, whose new side play Spurs on Sunday, told The Sun.
“Of course Christian was amazing technically but, physically, he didn’t want to be in challenges.
“For him to go to England, I was sceptical about it.
“But so far he has amazed me — he is an incredible player who is much stronger than he was before.”
Eriksen won three Eredivisie titles with Ajax before moving to White Hart Lane for £11.5million.
The 26-year-old is now one of the top players in the Premier League and is being coveted by Real Madrid.
Babel was signed by Liverpool for £11million in 2007 when he was just 20, but his time on Merseyside was not a success and left in 2011 to join Hoffenheim amid accusations he had a poor attitude.
Babel said: “There was nothing wrong with my attitude. I have never been a difficult person. I was always easy. I came in on time, I was always a professional.
“It was more that I wasn’t always consistent in putting maximum work into training sessions. If you are young and you don’t get rewarded with game time, or don’t come into games, it is difficult to try to still be hungry in the training sessions.
“That is very normal if you are 20. That was, I guess, mostly the issue. I always went to try to speak to the manager a lot. I was young and did things besides football, such as being involved a little with music.
“Then they took that part way out of proportion, that I was being more busy with music than with football.”
Rafa Benitez fined him two weeks’ wages in January 2010 for revealing on Twitter he had been dropped for a game with Stoke.
A year later, Babel tweeted a picture of referee Howard Webb in a Manchester United kit after a 1-0 FA Cup defeat, with the caption: “And they call him one of the best referees? That’s a joke. SMH.”
That made him the first player to be punished by the FA for a social media post — they fined him £10,000 — and days later Liverpool sold him.
Babel, now 32, said: “I posted it and after not even 30 minutes it was really all over — CNN, Sky Sports . . . I didn’t expect that to happen.”