Hatem Ben Arfa wins court case against PSG after bitter dispute and first-team exile
Hatem Ben Arfa was excluded from the Paris Saint-Germain squad for over a year during the 2017/18 season and has now won his long-disputed court case against the French club
Hatem Ben Arfa has won a partial victory in his legal battle against Paris Saint-Germain.
The Paris Court of Appeal have found PSG guilty of moral harassment and unpaid bills towards the midfielder and have been told to pay him just over €100,000 in compensation, according to Get French Football News.
Ben Arfa, 36, claimed he was frozen out of the PSG squad for over a year in 2017 after he made an ill-advised remark to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani - the Emir of Qatar - about the fact Nasser Al-Khelaifi was difficult to get in contact with.
As per France Football, Al-Khelaifi was said to have felt 'humiliated' in that moment and secretly stated that Ben Arfa would never put on a PSG shirt again. Ben Arfa joined the Parisiens from Nice in July 2016 and scored four times in 32 appearances during his maiden campaign at the Parc des Princes.
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It meant that the ex-Nice midfielder played zero first-team minutes for anyone in the 2017/18 season, before departing at the end of his contract in the summer. During his time at PSG, Ben Arfa also had a fractured relationship with manager Unai Emery as the pair disagreed on a number of occasions.
Ben Arfa was believed to have undermined Emery in front of the rest of the squad by mocking the Spaniard's attempts to speak French. The other players were not supposedly impressed by his impersonation.
He also said that Emery would never make it past the quarter-finals of the Champions League as a manager. Despite those antics, Ben Arfa was a popular member of the club's dressing room even when he failed to turn up for a warm-weather training camp in Doha in December 2016 - as the decision to fine him did not go down well.
Following his time out of first-team action, Ben Arfa claimed that he could have received some performance-based bonuses if he had not been frozen out. He attempted to win back €7million in damages.
Although Ben Arfa won the case, the court did not agree with the amount he tried to claim and ordered PSG to pay him just over €100k instead. As reported by L'Equipe, Ben Arfa was pocketing a gross monthly salary of £434,000 in the French capital that was split into two parts.
Ben Arfa has now been without a club since April 2022 after leaving Lille following a heated altercation with then-manager Jocelyn Gourvennec. He had initially signed a six-month contract with the Ligue 1 side and made nine appearances in all competitions, before slamming his boss' tactics and said "this is Guingamp" - a team Gourvennec formerly coached.
Ben Arfa later reportedly insulted Gourvennec and Lille president Oliver Letang on his Instagram story, calling them "twisted" following a 0-0 draw against Bordeaux. Gourvennec, 50, admitted that he had "never seen that" in his entire career as he referred to Ben Arfa's behaviour.
Before his time at Lille and after his spell at PSG, Ben Arfa enjoyed a relatively successful time at Rennes, where he netted nine goals and provided six assists in 41 appearances. That was the most amount of games he has played for a club since departing Newcastle in 2015.
The ex-Newcastle and Hull playmaker then joined Real Valladolid as he explored another different league, before moving back to France with Bordeaux and then Lille. In his professional career, Ben Arfa has clocked up 427 appearances, scoring 74 goals.
