**Former West Ham midfielder Dimitri Payet has retired from football aged 38.**
The Frenchman has hung his boots up after a senior career that spanned just over two decades. Over his entire career, Payet made 782 appearances, scoring 158 goals and registering 205 assists.
He was a mercurial maverick, a man who could perform magic with a ball at his feet.
And during a week where both Neymar and Rayan Cherki have been criticised and downplayed by the English media, it feels apt that it was also the week when one of the Premier League’s all-time “ballers” hung up his boots.
Payet signed for West Ham in 2015 for a fee of just under £11 million. We all know what happened after that: sublime skills and famous free-kicks – the most exciting player the Hammers had signed since Paolo Di Canio over fifteen years prior.
But we also know that things ended on a sour note – a demotion to the youth team, a refusal to play, a teary Slaven Bilić press conference.
You will still find Hammers fans who label Payet a “snake”. But the fact is, West Ham fans still talk about him; he’s still in those “greatest player” debates. I think there was a part of us that secretly wished and hoped he would return one day.
That never happened, and he mainly played out the rest of his career in France before a brief spell in Brazil – a surprising move, especially from a player who claimed “homesickness” as a reason for leaving East London in early 2017.
There was more to it, of course: problems in his marriage, a London Stadium move that had, so far, proven underwhelming.
That’s another thing that I think separates Payet from many other modern West Ham “greats”: he was an Upton Park player.
Yes, he scored that wonderful solo goal against Middlesbrough and pulled off that ridiculous rabona assist in Stratford. But for me, Payet will always be remembered as the last great showman of the Boleyn Ground.
As someone who was too young to witness the greatness of Di Canio, Payet is the most exciting West Ham player I’ve ever had the joy of watching. I think he was one of the most exciting footballers of his generation. He came 17th in the Ballon d’Or in 2016… playing for WEST HAM!
Now that Payet has retired, it feels like a chapter has ended for West Ham fans of a certain generation. Even into his mid-thirties, there were half-hearted cries from fans of “one last dance” in East London. We know for definite now that that will never happen.
For most neutral fans, Payet is labelled a “streets will never forget” player, and I think that term will stick with him post-retirement. But he was so much more than that. As the song said, “I just don’t think you understand”.
But we understood. We understood how special he was. His time in claret and blue was short-lived, but West Ham fans will never forget it.
Happy retirement, Dimi.