Ben Arfa on Pardew: “I will submit to his authority while maintaining my philosophy”

January 17th, 2012 | 32 Comments |

Hatem Ben Arfa spoke to the French press yesterday about some of the problems that have plagued his life and footballing career to date and how they’re being addressed at Newcastle. Before going on, I should say that I used Google Translate and my grade 4 CSE French to translate a lot of this, so it might not be 100% accurate!

Benny starts by summing up the problems he had:

“I gave off something negative. I had bad energy. I am loud. I always wanted to participate in conversations. I had enormous difficulty submitting to authority”

He then goes on to say what he thinks the root cause of that ‘attitude’ was:

“My father never told me ‘I love you’. He ran out of affection in my life. He never managed to externalise his feelings. I do not want him. My father had no father. He reproduces a pattern I am trying to break for me because I have to move forward.” (more…)