Maverick genius, enfant terrible, enigmatic enigma – insert your footballing cliché to describe Hatem Ben Arfa here.
Yet scratch beneath the surface story and alarmist headlines and you’ll discover one of the greatest football talents in the world free and available to play for your football club if you’re lucky enough to be a fan of Major League Soccer.
Astonishingly, Ben Arfa is not allowed to play football and is effectively ‘team-tied’ in Europe. He can’t play for a third team in competition in the 2014/15 season due to a solitary appearance for Newcastle U21s and later Hull City, whom he joined on loan.
It should be against employment legislation, yet what is the Barclays Premier League and European football’s loss could be Major Soccer League’s gain if a team wakes up and hires one of football’s most entertaining and skillful talents.
Ben Arfa is no ordinary player, thank God, he plays for the glory of the game and takes players on for fun, scoring wonder goals in the process and is a real attacking asset to a side.
Such exceptional dribbling ability ranked him in Europe’s Top 5 dribblers up with Lionel Messi statistically when he was fully fit and playing regularly for Newcastle’s team before falling out with Manager Alan Pardew.
Pardew actually got a lot out of Ben Arfa – 12 goals in 72 games in an injury-hit 4 years on Tyneside as he converted him into a right-sided winger after a double-leg break against Man City curtailed his initial no. 10 role with the club.
Stupendous goals came against Blackburn in The FA Cup, a mazy dribble which was nominated for the FIFA Ferenc Puskas World Goal of the Year award of 2011/2 and a Diego Maradona v England Mexico ’86-esque slalom through Bolton’s defence that was actually the better of the goals he scored that season.
Other gems against Arsenal, Fulham, twice, both home and away, the latter very similar to Phillippe Coutinho’s off-the-bar effort against Bolton last week in The FA Cup, and match-winning efforts against Aston Villa are worth repeated views on YouTube.
Also noteworthy are his international goal for France against Norway and his full debut for Newcastle, away at Everton when he scored the match-winning goal of the game amidst a virtuoso performance that announced his arrival in English football.
Goals are an increasingly rare occurrence in football. Ben Arfa is capable of opening up defences and producing one from nowhere, a tremendous quality in a player in an increasingly tight modern game.
Too much stock is seemingly being placed in the football world in Hull Manager Steve Bruce’s inability to manage the extraordinary talent of Ben Arfa.
He hauled him off after 35 minutes at Old Trafford with his Tigers side getting beat and told the player he’d never play for him again. Maybe if he’d left him on the pitch, he may have won an equalizing penalty like he did in 2011 for Newcastle, the first won by an opposition player at the Red Devils stadium for 5 years at the time.
Hull City are third bottom of the Premier League and will be relegated make no mistake about it and I’d bet on Hatem Ben Arfa’s footballing ability over Steve Bruce’s managerial capabilities and scapegoating any day of the week.
Don’t forget the calibre of Ben Arfa’s soccer pedigree. A football education at the famed Clairefontaine Academy that also produced Thierry Henry and Zinedine Zidane, he has won 5 Lique One titles and 5 French Cups and has a respectable 2 goals from 13 full international caps for his country.
His is a major football talent that is going begging and it is heart-breaking for the purist football fan to read quotes like this from him:
“Today I’ll try to be positive and see what I can do. On Monday I was on the floor but coming in to training today has made me feel better. Now I just have to do the best I can for the future. The solution may be to go abroad. Would I go to Russia? I’m ready to go to the north pole just to play football again. But for now I can’t really speculate – I just have to think…. I’m just disappointed and sad.”
It was a joy to watch Hatem Ben Arfa in a black and white shirt whenever he was on the pitch and producing a palpable sense of excitement every time he got the ball knowing something special was on the cards.
I was there with 500 others that fateful Monday in August when he played his last game for Newcastle for the Under 21s – in fact he was the sole reason myself and a friend made the trip to the game and, of course, he dazzled and beat five men and scored an unbelievable goal.
Its not often you get to see real football genius in the flesh – the North American Soccer League did with Pele and George Best in the 1980s yet they were past it – rarely if ever has the continent had a star in their prime.
Ben Arfa is 27 years old and still potentially a world. Take a chance on him, MLS and you won’t regret giving the ultimate football entertainer the stage his talents deserve – all a magician needs is his wand.
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