Revealed: Why Hatem Ben Arfa found himself ostracised at PSG | OneFootball

Hatem Ben Arfa’s disappearing act at Paris Saint-Germain has been one of French football’s great mysteries of recent times, but not any longer.

Last week, Ben Arfa announced via social media that he would be leaving PSG at the end of the season, having last played for the club in a Coupe de France clash with Avranches on 5 April 2017 – almost a year ago.

And now, thanks to a fascinating exposé from French outlet France Football, we can finally understand what led to the 31-year-old being frozen out of the Parc des Princes picture.

It all began with an incident which took place at the club’s training facility in early April 2017. According to France Football, Ben Arfa is understood to have made an ill-advised joke to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani – the Emir of Qatar – about the fact Nasser Al-Khelaifi – the club’s president – was often difficult to get hold of.

Al-Khelaifi is said to have felt humiliated in that moment, and secretly swore to himself that Ben Arfa would never pull on a PSG shirt again.

The president’s decision is unlikely to have been met with too much resistance from Unai Emery. France Football claim Emery and Ben Arfa had been on bad terms after the playmaker told the coach that he would never make it past the last 16 of the Champions League, even with the best team in the world.

If that weren’t insulting enough, Ben Arfa is also believed to have been fond of undermining Emery in front of the rest of the squad by mocking the Spaniard’s attempts to speak French – an impersonation which the other players were not, apparently, unamused by.

It seems Ben Arfa was a popular member of the club’s dressing room and even when he failed to show up for a warm weather training camp in Doha in December 2016, the decision to first fine him €100,000 and then try to sell him did not go down well with the rest of the squad.

But whether his exclusion from first-team football was justified or not, French football’s enfant terrible will be on the move again this summer, and it will be interesting to see where his career takes him next.

On 5 April he will turn 32 and in one final provocation to Emery and Al-Khelaifi, France Football say the mercurial former Lyon, Marseille, Newcastle United, Hull City and Nice magician is planning on celebrating the occasion by taking pizzas into the dressing room to share with his team-mates.