Juninho Pernambucano has told RMC he expected former Lyon teammate Hatem ben Arfa to play for some of football's greatest teams.
Juninho, 40, was part of the wildly successful Lyon squad a fresh-faced and much-hyped Ben Arfa joined in 2004 after having shone at the club's youth academy.
Ben Arfa helped the club win four Ligue 1 titles before heading to Marseille in 2008, a move he was expected to use as a springboard to secure a switch to a heavyweight European side.
However, while his OL youth academy teammate Karim Benzema joined Real Madrid in 2009, Ben Arfa couldn't deliver on his potential, failing to establish himself at Marseille before only intermittently exploiting his talent following his transfer to Newcastle United in 2010.
"I saw him grow up. He was a player of enormous talent. He was difficult to handle sometimes, but not as bad as people think," Juninho said after seeing Ben Arfa's return to France with Nice scuppered by FIFA regulations on Tuesday.
"Given his talent, we thought we would see him go to Madrid, to Barcelona. Now, he also has to accept he has never established himself in football. He musn't stop now. He's 27, he can still improve. He's a boy who had a lot of talent."
After announcing the end of the contract he signed last month with Nice by mutual consent on Tuesday, Ben Arfa is seeking a new club.
He was prevented from featuring for the Ligue 1 side after the French Football League (LFP) refused to ratify the deal, arguing Ben Arfa would fall foul of FIFA regulations preventing a player playing for three different clubs in the same season.
Ben Arfa joined Nice hoping to relaunch a career that had stalled, and upon signing for them in early January, had claimed it had been an easy decision to make.
"My mind was made up in ten minutes!" the France international, who has 13 caps, explained. "Even if Real Madrid had called me, I would have refused. I had decided it was Nice."