I've been Ben Arfa

For so many people, playing football is their purest form of self-expression. However, when you’re a playmaker of foreign heritage, you can often find your identity misunderstood both on and off the field. Justin Salhani looks at the turbulent career of Hatem Ben Arfa, and the challenges of fitting into a team and wider society.

There’s an iconic photo of a young Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema, and Hatem Ben Arfa taken shortly after they’ve won the u-17 European Championship for France in 2004. Three young Frenchmen of Arab - North African descent. This photo once signalled the future of French football; but, one by one, these three players fell out of the national team’s limelight. The most enigmatic of the trio, and the one I think about the most, is Ben Arfa.

When Ben Arfa emerged from Clairefontaine, he was considered the most skilled player in the institution's history. Coaches said his potential exceeded that of other graduates like Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka and that his technical ability was possibly even greater than that of Zinedine Zidane. There were high hopes for all three players in this photo. But none were as high as the hopes for Ben Arfa. 

A couple of years ago, Ben Arfa signed for his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain. He’d just come off a season where he propelled OGC Nice into fourth place in the league through a series of his signature plays: dazzling solo goals after mazy runs past multiple defenders. Yet his mercurial talents didn’t fit Unai Emery’s system, and he was relegated to training with the PSG reserves. 

I remember an instance where he made a rare appearance on the PSG bench. I’d been dying to see him play again, so I tuned in and awaited his introduction. Unai Emery brought Ben Arfa on late in the second half and it took just a couple of touches to realise that he was a shadow of the marauding attacker I remembered. The swagger that terrorised defenders had been replaced with indecision and meekness.

It would be insincere to look at these players without reflecting on how their careers mirror my own. As an Arab man born and raised in the West, it’s an identity to which I relate. And over the last few years, the photo of Nasri, Benzema and Ben Arfa - and what it represents -has visited my thoughts. 

I’ve been Ben Arfa. I’ve played in competitive games where I felt unstoppable. But those same qualities that awarded such highs also brought suffering. 

There was the high school coach who benched me for taking on a defender. The college coach who would only allow one creative player on the field at a time. The Italian amateur club where I - the lone foreigner - began the first training session by nutmegging the team captain, and ended the season nearly coming to blows with my own team-mate on the pitch.

“Am I misunderstood as a footballer, or as someone of Arab heritage? I believe the answer is that one cannot be separated from the other. ”

Just recently, I played a seven-a-side match in Paris. I came off the bench to score a goal and assist another in my first ten minutes of play. Up 2-0, we struggled to hold the ball and began conceding. As we did, the criticism from the team of entirely white Frenchmen turned to only one person. Me.

I’ve often asked myself: am I misunderstood as a footballer or as someone of Arab heritage? And I believe the answer is that one cannot be separated from the other. While drifting through the latter stages of such a match last week, Albert Camus’ words were imprinted on my mind, “I rebel therefore I am.”

This existential rebellion is what feeds each of the players who have walked in the same lane as Ben Arfa, dating all the way back to the pioneer of Franco-Arab footballers - Larbi Benbarek. It feeds every player of Arab descent from the French national team down to the street courts of Paris. Every idiosyncratic touch - each deft flick, each exquisitely-timed pass, each soul-snatching nutmeg - grows from the roots of this rebellion. The two qualities are inseparable because they feed each other. It is their essence.

That’s why the criticism of Ben Arfa’s weaknesses often miss the mark. They imply that if only he changed his character, he could thrive.  Dani Alves, a man who played for years along Lionel Messi, called Ben Arfa ‘the phenomenon’. A player of his unmatched quality can thrive when given the proper role or support. But the willingness to offer that is limited in the modern professional game.

When Germany were dumped out of the 2018 World Cup, a barrage of racist criticism was directed at playmaker Mesut Özil. While Özil is neither French nor holds Arab heritage, there exists a similar dynamic with Germans of Turkish ancestry. “I am German when we win”, he said, “but I am an immigrant when we lose.”

Many of his own teammates - though none of his teammates of colour - denied Özil’s claims of experiencing racism. Rather predictably, he Özil was castigated and accused of “playing the race card” by many in German society, as if the deck wasn’t long stacked against men with foreign names - regardless of what citizenship they carry or identify with. 

At 32, when I look back on a career that has seen me play against professionals and national teamers from the United States, France, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago, Lebanon and beyond, I know now that my footballing identity reflects who I am as an individual. To try and completely change how I play is akin to changing the direction my blood flows. It is here where I truly understand Ben Arfa. If he sacrificed his game, his essence as a player, he wouldn’t be Ben Arfa. That day when he played for PSG, he lost himself.

Is it possible to find a paradigm-shifting solution in how players like Ben Arfa are approached? Must they be cult hero or grand villain with no in-between? “Football, it is also love,” Ben Arfa once said. He was addressing the grinta-laced intensity and defensiveness of Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid, but he could have just as easily been projecting a hope out into a football culture that has seen him become the subject of so much ire. 

When embraced at Nice or at Rennes, Ben Arfa thrived. Even during his rollercoaster stint in England he provided the occasional moment of match-winning brilliance. What if society wasn’t so quick to place judgement on players like him? What if they weren’t scapegoated? What if, instead, these players with all their flaws, their beauty, their tantrums…what if they were simply loved?