Jean-Pierre Rivère tried to bring Hatem Ben Arfa back to OGC Nice in January 2026, according to Nice-Matin. The 39-year-old forward has not played for a professional club since leaving Lille in 2022, and has never announced his retirement.
Rivère knows the file well: he was the one who brought Ben Arfa to Nice in 2015-16, the best season of his career, under Claude Puel, with 17 goals and 6 assists in 34 matches. Back at the helm since December 2025 to calm an internal crisis, with Puel returning to the bench at the same time, he reportedly banked on a good Coupe de France run to win his former player over. Nice went all the way to the final, lost 3-1 to Lens on 22 May 2026.
Rivère’s plan: club support to regain physical fitness, then appearances of 20, 30 or 40 minutes late in the season, for next to no pay. Puel agreed, on one condition: Ben Arfa had to get fit in Paris before joining the squad, or go through the reserve side to find his rhythm. The move ultimately fell through.
That gradual fitness build-up before letting him loose for twenty minutes, I do that every August with the lad who comes back from holiday in Spain. Except at my club there’s no reserve side: there’s pitch 2, and he runs with the goalkeepers until I say stop.
A Nice-Matin journalist, quoted by RMC Sport, summed up why the deal collapsed: “Rivère realised it wasn’t going to work. Even four years away from the pitch, he knew he wasn’t going to spend months in the shadows, and it didn’t happen.”
It’s true, we checked: RMC Sport.
