The Short Lived Summer Transfer Saga

By: Corey | July 2nd, 2008

So while most leagues are awash with transfer rumors and some big name deals in the works that turn into transfer sagas that span the entire summer, France remains pretty quite. With Lyon, Bordeaux, Lille, and Marseille quietly going about their work with some solid but not spectacular deals, it was to be another off-season of EPL-dominated transfer news. And for some reason, Jean Michel Auluas and Pape Diouf both were quite up til recently, with no public harranging. But then Hatem Ben Arfa came into the limelight.

Ben Arfa had an overly dramatic falling out with Karim Benzema, Alain Perrin and it seems like the entire Lyon organization around the end of February. He was benched for the rest of the season and proceded to pout instead of winning his place back, and the trust of his teammates. When the season was over, he did his best Nicholas Anelka impression during the title celebrations. And now he has demanded a move away to Marseille, which Jean Michel Auluas was happy to do if it was another Ligue 1 club in order to ’strenghten’ Ligue 1. But dealings between Marseille and Lyon are never clear cut.

After a pretty low 11 million euro bid was accepted, something appeared seriously wrong with Ben Arfa and Lyon, even if his nemesis Alain Perrin was fired in place of ego-soother Claude Puel. Auluas rushed the deal only to find a snag in a personal detail, Ben Arfa being allowed to keep 1.5 million of the transfer fee, which Auluas clearly did not want to give to the “brat”. He also wanted a guarentee of 20% of the future transfer fee.

Of course Pape Diouf didnt have a clue as to what was going on between Hatem and Lyon, so he announced the deal, albeight prematurely for Lyon’s liking. They threw down an ultimatum, yadda yadda yadda, Ben Arfa showed up to train with Marseille while Claude Puel said he expected him in Lyon to train. Well now the LFP has recognized the transfer as legitimate, and Ben Arfa gets to keep his bag of cash and live the dream in Marseille. Here is the kicker though.

When the negotiations were stalled, it was not really due to the clause for Ben Arfa keeping a sum of money, because Auluas would have built that into the price of the player. It was because Real Madrid (yes, the team I dearly love and blog for) came in with a secret bid to pick up a player on the cheap. It was also rumored that because Real bid, Barca would too. But from what I have heard, Schuster was not to excited to deal with a tempremental brat with barely any experience but still a big head. The same could be said for Guardiola, who like Schuster, is very focused on building a team spirit more then collected some talented individuals.

So Auluas was trying to broker a better deal with Real, which appears to be the true reason he tried to stall the Ben Arfa deal. But now he is left with a realativly small sum of money for one of the best prospects to come out of France in some time. And the only possible transfer saga of the summer ended in a little more than a week. Oh well, theres always next summer.