Passed by OM between 2008 and 2011 when he was considered one of the great hopes of French football, Hatem Ben Arfa finally disappointed within the Marseille club. And Mamadou Niang, his teammate at the time at OM, today displays a huge feeling of waste given the talent of Ben Arfa.
Revealed at the highest level in the ranks of theOLhis training club, Hatem Ben Arfa had finally been forced into exile since the Rhone club was unable to offer him the indisputable starter status he was claiming at the time. The former star was therefore recruited by theABOUT in the summer of 2008 for €12m, and the Marseille club logically harbored very high hopes in this transfer. But the adventure of Ben Arfa at theABOUT quickly turned into a fiasco.
Surprise rookie, OM are preparing for disaster? https://t.co/VnUyYwjdB1 pic.twitter.com/2da9G1II9Z
— le10sport (@le10sport) January 25, 2023
“He didn’t want to know anything”
Asked by 90football, Mamadou Niang came back on the way toHatem Ben Arfa at the Vélodrome, and the former Senegalese striker, who was an icon of theABOUTshows great regret: “ His entourage, I don’t know what he put in his brain, but he had to put shit in him. I was talking to him, he didn’t want to know anything. In his brain there was something that jumped, in matches, he played when he wanted “says Mamadou Niang.
“Everyone expected to see him at the level of Benzema, Messi, Ronaldo…”
The former strikerABOUT continues aboutHatem Ben Arfaa pure talent wasted in his eyes: “ It’s everyone’s biggest regret, everyone expected to see him at the same level as Karim Benzema, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. In the end, we got nothing out of Hatem and look at the career he had “. Nevertheless, Ben Arfa had everything, in his opinion, to make a great career: Hatem in training, it was a pleasure, a joy to see him play. He did these things for you (…) When he felt like it, he was unstoppable, he made you win a match on his own. But when he doesn’t feel like it, you can’t get anything out of him », regrets Mamadou Niang.