The diminutive attacking midfielder always had bags of talent – but never reached his full potential
In 2016, Hatem Ben Arfa arrived at Paris Saint-Germain as a player looking to revive a once-promising career. Five years later, he won a lawsuit against the club for €100,000 (£86,000/$110,000) after making only 30 appearances and scoring three goals. He was perhaps the first, but certainly not the last, in a series of failed signings to arrive in the French capital falling into the category of a world-class talent turned bargain buy, who showed exactly why he had fallen from the top.
Ben Arfa is now remembered in YouTube compilations and adoring tweets. His highlight reel remains impressive, a fixture of football fans’ “streets won’t forget” rhetoric. But those goals, impressive as they were, paint a far kinder picture of the attacking midfielder. Instead, Ben Arfa was an immense talent forgotten, or, as his former agent claimed: "A huge waste – maybe the biggest waste in football of the 21st century."
Once dubbed by himself as equal parts sensitive and impulsive, Ben Arfa is now a reminder of how players destined for greatness can so easily get it all wrong.
Still, it’s not quite that simple. Ben Arfa’s decline wasn’t linear — he was too good for that. Instead, his career was defined by a number of false dawns, a player who seemed to promise that he would reach his best, before failing to do so in the most dramatic of circumstances.
Getty'He was on a different level to the others'
Ben Arfa broke into the Lyon first team as the other half of a promising duo, featuring alongside an 18-year-old Karim Benzema for a team full of talent. And for long stretches, he was arguably better than the man who would eventually light up the Santiago Bernabeu.
"He was on a different level to the others. Everyone was raving about him," Paul Montgomery, a former high-level recruiting advisor for Newcastle, told .
Ben Arfa's quality and technical ability was apparent early on, with the teenager drifting between opponents, and scampering into space with the ball glued to his feet. He would soon be scoring the kind of goals that he became an internet sensation for. The first big one came against Stuttgart in the 2007-08 Champions League, with Ben Arfa darting down the wing, swivelling past two defenders, and blasting home from an impossible angle. He did it again in Ligue 1, weaving through the Toulouse defence before placing the ball into the bottom corner. Two weeks later, he added another for the highlight reel, a 30-yard ping in a 2-0 win over Lorient.
He finished that season eight goals and six assists, a campaign impressive enough to secure a then-significant €12 million (£10.2m/$13.4m) move to Ligue 1 rivals Marseille — despite interest from a host of top European clubs.
AdvertisementGetty'I will never go back to Marseille'
But it was there that the troubles started. Ben Arfa had always had something of an attitude, something he proved by getting into a training ground scuffle with centre-back Sebastien Squillaci towards the end of his time at Lyon. The two came to blows in the dressing room after a hard tackle and verbal exchange at training. Ben Arfa was an unused substitute in the following game. Squillaci, though, was entrusted to come off the bench.
That wasn't an isolated incident. Ben Arfa left Lyon with little grace, dubbing the league winners a small club before his move. And he found himself in hot water within two weeks of his Marseille career, coming to blows with former Liverpool striker Djibril Cisse in training. The France international was swiftly loaned out to Sunderland.
On the pitch, though, Ben Arfa was mesmerising. He scored six goals in his first 11 appearances, immediately worth all of the money Marseille paid, and the controversy that came with him. Still, his attitude would soon outweigh his talent. There was another bust-up, this time with Modeste M'bami before a Champions League clash with Liverpool. He followed it by refusing to warm up against PSG, claiming he was injured. There were missed training sessions, shots at the manager in the media, and a sometimes blatant refusal to pass to his teammates. But in between came moments of magic, more goals, assists and dribbles to fill the highlight reel.
Other oppprtunities would soon arise, though. And Ben Arfa, no longer interested in playing for Marseille, went on strike.
"I will never go back to Marseille,” he told L'Equipe. "It's finished. I am ready to not play for the season. I have my pride, my dignity. I am not a stopgap."
Getty Images'It was a joke how good he was'
Some at Newcastle had wanted to buy Ben Arfa as early as 2005. Montgomery begged the club to sign the then 15-year-old, according to . At the time, he was available for £500,000 ($650,000), yet to pen a professional deal at Lyon. But the Newcastle management hadn't even heard of him, even though he was dubbed a prodigy in France.
Eight years later, the Magpies spent five times that on a loan with a buy option for a 23-year-old with notorious attitude problems. He left Marseille with equal gusto as he did Lyon two years earlier, explaining his departure in no uncertain terms: "Club officials don’t give a damn about me. I’m prepared to put my career on hold if they do not accept the offer from Newcastle. I’m not just a sack of dirty washing or a piece of sh*t."
So, despite all of Ben Arfa's talent, it was a massive risk for the Magpies. Those fears were soon quelled by a goal on his full debut, with Ben Arfa rifling home a shot from 30 yards out in a 1-0 win at Goodison Park.
Those famous attitude issues wouldn't crop up again, if only because a gruesome leg break would end his debut season in October. The following year was arguably Ben Arfa's best in professional football, a campaign that cemented his cult hero status. The Frenchman bagged five goals and added six assists as Newcastle made an unlikely push for fifth place in the English top flight.
"It was a joke how good he was. We’d heard everyone raving about him and you saw it instantly. Natural talent and flair," former Magpies midfielder James Perch recalled.
That season is seldom remembered for Newcastle's overall performance or Demba Ba's 16 league goals. Instead, it was marked by a run that has etched itself into Premier League folklore. You've probably seen it before. Ben Arfa spins around one Bolton defender inside his own half before accelerating down the pitch. He then evades a tackle, dinks the ball over the lunge of another, and finishes past a helpless goalkeeper. It remains one of the best goals in Premier League history, a fixture in YouTube compilations with hyperbolic titles.
And that was the peak of his time in England. Ben Arfa, just 24, spent the last three years in English football falling out of favour with teammates and managers alike. At one point, club captain Fabricio Coloccini approached manager Alan Pardew and demanded that Ben Arfa be benched, threatening that the rest of the team would refuse to play if he was in the lineup.
By the end of things, he was sent out to Hull City on loan, later dubbing himself a 'prisoner' as the Mike Ashley-run Magpies collapsed. Newcastle terminated his contract at the end of 2014, six weeks before its planned expiry.
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Gettyimages'Within 10 minutes, my choice was made'
But Ben Arfa was too good to simply fade away. In January 2015, and still in his prime, he signed for Nice on a free. He claimed, at the time, that he would snub any and all other offers for the mid table French club. Ben Arfa, so often criticised by his teammates at Newcastle for a lack of commitment and poor performances in training, wanted to reclaim the spotlight. He made that clear in his introductory press conference.
"Within 10 minutes, my choice was made," the Frenchman said. "Even if Real Madrid had called at that moment, my mind was made up."
His transformative return would have to be put on hold, though, as he was unable to play for the remainder of a season due to UEFA rules blocking him from playing for a third club in the same campaign. That six-month break seemed to work wonders for his career. Ben Arfa dazzled for Nice the following season, scoring 17 and adding six assists as his side clinched a Europa League spot.
And the highlights were as glorious as expected: quick nutmegs, sharp turns and effortless finishes. Ben Arfa had his dream position, asked to float around and create. Finally, he was an undisputed focal point of a side — and showed exactly what he could do when given license to roam. It resulted in an unlikely recall to a French international side that had subbed him for four years, although he didn't make the squad for Les Bleus' eventual Euro 2016 final loss.