West Ham’s sale of Dimitri Payet to Marseille for the figure of £25m was confirmed by the East London club on January the 29th. The 29-year-old’s legacy status with the West Ham United fans has transformed from messiah to pariah in the past two months at the club in a period where they needed him most. Payet has delivered a series of poor performances and his body language has shown nothing short of complete disinterest. However, this is not the first time in Dimitri Payet’s career that he has displayed an unprofessional attitude to force a move away from a club at the time.
After a remarkable first season in the Premier League where he was named the Premier League’s Player of the Year at the London Football Awards as well as claiming West Ham’s annual Hammer of the Year trophy, Payet signed a 5-year contract extension in February 2016 that increased his wages to £125,000 a week. Not only did West Ham heavily reward the player for his outstanding first season impact in the Premier League, they put him onto a global stage in one of the world’s top league’s and in doing so earned him a national team recall from France manager Didier Deschamps.
West Ham fans revered him. How sour it turned this campaign.
This season has seen Payet show glimpses of his clear world-class talent with exceptional goals against Middlesbrough and Liverpool but for the most part fail to match the playing standards of his first season at the club. When Slaven Bilic confirmed to the press on January the 12th that the player did not want to play for the club any longer and had gone on strike, all knew there would be no going back.
At the tender age of 16-years-old, Dimitri Payet from the small French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, had his first major opportunity in mainland France to break into professional football at Le Havre spurned after four tumultuous years where his difficult character was criticised by senior coaching figures at the club as well being accused of a lack of motivation. Payet was thereafter forced to return to the island of Reunion in 2003 and subsequently joined AS Excelsior.
On 18 May 2010, Payet who was then playing for Saint-Etienne, was involved in a notable physical altercation with teammate and captain Blaise Matuidi during the team’s 1–0 defeat to Toulouse. Payet was on the receiving end of scathing criticism from teammate Yohan Benalouane for displaying a lack of aggression at the time and was then confronted by Matuidi. Both quickly went face-to-face with the Payet delivering a blow to Matuidi’s head before the two were separated by referee and teammates. Payet was subsequently substituted and fined by the club’s president.
The following year, after impressive form for Saint Etienne and English interest from Chelsea and Liverpool, Payet sought for a move to Paris Saint-Germain in the wake of a reported bid from the Parisian club in January 2011 (pre-PSG’s Qatari ownership). Saint-Etienne rejected all interest only for Payet to consequently refuse to turn up for training and was demoted to the reserves.
Turning 30 years of age in March, Dimitri Payet is in danger of seeing a career so full of unquestionable world-class flair fail to reach the heights (domestically) that his talent warrants. He has left the Premier League; one of the world’s finest leagues to return to Ligue 1; a division where he has grafted and plied his trade in for the majority of his career, largely out of the limelight. Links with leading global clubs such as the likes of Real Madrid and Chelsea will die down; his chances of maintaining a first x11 spot with the French national team could also arguably be affected in the long-term, with younger pacier options coming through the French ranks playing at bigger European clubs. This is not an individual who has been dealt a hard hand by the footballing world; his career path has been predominantly determined by his mental attitude throughout; a symptomatic issue surrounding the modern-day footballer in recent years.
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