At 38, Hatem Ben Arfa has quietly stepped away from the game without ever officially announcing his retirement, yet his legend lives on through a series of unforgettable anecdotes.
As highlighted by L’Équipe, the former Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon talent left a trail of stories that perfectly reflect his genius and eccentricity.
As a teenager at Lyon, he was already so famous that two girls approached him at McDonald’s, only for him to joke: “Sorry Hatem, he’s my twin brother, my name is Sofiane.”
When Juninho once asked him to help collect equipment with the youth players, Ben Arfa snapped back: “You’re just a free-kick taker, you don’t give me orders.” At Marseille, teammates nicknamed him “Socrate” after seeing philosophy books by Spinoza, Kant and Freud in his bag.
His uniqueness followed him to PSG, where he accidentally smashed a glass bottle he used as a microphone during his initiation song.
In 2008, after leaving Lyon for Marseille, the club’s kitman found a forgotten cheque for 90,000 euros in his locker, while his first Ligue 1 coach, Paul Le Guen, sometimes had to stop training so veterans would not “destroy” him after he embarrassed them on the pitch.
