An enigma wrapped in a football shirt

Is Nicolas Anelka a costly misfit or a Gallic genius? The former Arsenal striker returns tomorrow with the question burning, writes Richard Williams.

Everyone, even Jean-Luc Godard, has something to say about Nicolas Anelka. To the grand old man of French new wave cinema, the enfant terrible of French new wave football is a symbol of the "depersonalisation" of the heroes of sport.

"They're just like film stars," Godard told L'Equipe recently. "They want to withdraw inside their shells and to live in a closed world. If I were the boss of Paris Saint-Germain, I would have put it in Anelka's contract that he had to be filmed at home, eating his lunch and talking to his girlfriend. Show it on TV and watch it get a two per cent rating. Then nobody would care any more and he'd be left in peace."

The tension between celebrity and reclusiveness is at the heart of the enigma of Anelka, who arrived at Anfield from Paris last month to begin the latest chapter of a short but uniquely turbulent career. And, after three starts and a couple of appearances as a substitute, including one marvellous goal and a glittering assist, the jury is still out on his re-emergence.

In the FA Cup tie against Birmingham City a week ago, partnering Michael Owen, the 22-year-old Frenchman looked once again like the deadly striker - a perfect mixture of ego and altruism - that Arsenal fans grew to love. Minus Owen against Southampton on Wednesday, however, an unfriendly witness would have identified him as the lost boy so expensively rejected by Real Madrid and PSG, although he never stopped trying and was denied a goal only by an exceptional save.

Tomorrow's return to Highbury may provide something closer to conclusive evidence of the wisdom of Gerard Houllier's decision to bring him back into English football.

"The two places he went after Arsenal were not so positive," Arsene Wenger said yesterday, looking ahead to the reunion with his former protege. "He was a star here, and adored by everybody. I believe he didn't get that in Madrid or Paris. He missed that kind of love and passion. And we all like to be loved."

Not that Anelka ever went out of his way to give such an impression. Now there is a sense that the world is simply waiting for another of his implosions, another incident in which his inability to act like a normal footballer - meaning his refusal to accept of the role of "club servant" - leads inexorably to acrimony and abrupt departure. Behind the caricature, however, there lies a different story.

"The world of professional sport is a jungle," he said at the height of the furore over his move to Real Madrid. "And the higher you get, the worse it is. So it's time to stop talking about things like loyalty to a shirt. All of that, except for the national team, is over."

There are those who find such a relatively sophisticated analysis unacceptable, particularly from the mouth of a player who, barely out of his teens, ought to be showing more gratitude for his inflated salary.

"No emotion," Andre Merelle said. "That's his strength." His old coach at Clairefontaine, the French national football academy, Merelle is the man who got him to drop his studied surliness, shed some weight and work on his speed until he emerged as the pick of a talented generation. Merelle was talking about Anelka the footballer, the cold-eyed marksman whose two goals for France against England at Wembley in 1999 made it look as though the world champions had found the final piece of their jigsaw.

In his early days at Highbury, he was criticised for seldom smiling when he scored. "I'd rather have a player who scores and doesn't smile than one who smiles when he doesn't score," Wenger said yesterday, smiling himself.

He left London in the summer of 1999 because he and his brothers, Didier and Claude, who act as his agents, sensed the opportunity to improve his status. They negotiated a £23 million sterling transfer deal with Real Madrid and forced Arsenal's board to accept it after a long and acrimonious dispute. Wenger now believes that Anelka wishes he had never left.

At the Bernabeu his difficulties merely multiplied. John Toshack, who had signed him, was sacked only a few weeks into the season and the new coach, Vicente del Bosque, refused to include him in his plans. Fernando Hierro, the club captain, told the press that Anelka had failed to make himself a part of the team, although Steve McManaman put that down to shyness, youth, and the fact that he spoke no Spanish.

Off the pitch Real's finances were in chaos and the president, Florentino Perez, needed to remove a couple of the highest earners to fund the arrival from Barcelona of Luis Figo. As a result Anelka had the curious experience of scoring the goals that took his team into the final of the European Cup, of picking up a winner's medal after a final played in Paris, and then of being transferred - for £21.5 million - back home to PSG.

But there was to be no happy reunion with the club's head coach, Luis Fernandez, who had given him his league debut in a PSG shirt five years earlier. After a desultory first season, Fernandez made it clear that the team's attacking positions were to be filled by a trio of Brazilians.

Having ceded his place in the French national team to Thierry Henry and David Trezeguet before Euro 2000, Anelka was in danger of falling behind Sylvain Wiltord, Steve Marlet and Djibril Cisse and, as the World Cup approached, disappearing from the squad altogether.

Eyebrows were raised by the announcement of his loan move to Liverpool. During the 1997 under-20 World Cup, a France side coached by Houllier were eliminated when Anelka missed a penalty in a shoot-out. Afterwards he felt he had been treated as a scapegoat by the coach. Two years later his bitterness towards Houllier was still apparent. "When we meet," he said then, "we shake hands and say hello. That's all."

But when Anelka was barely 18, Houllier was describing him to me as "the most promising player of his age I've ever seen. Ouf! Extraordinary. If his mental attitude is right, one day he'll win the Ballon d'Or, definitely."

And despite their disagreements, Houllier's admiration never wavered. "Nicolas has got a very high esteem of himself," the coach said a couple of years later, "which is good when you're a forward. He's very quick with the ball, which is different from being quick without the ball. As soon as he starts running for goal, it's very difficult for a defender to catch him without committing a foul. And now he realises that he has to work more. Maybe he had a mental problem before."

It could be that, at 22, Anelka is being given a last chance to fulfil the early promise. Now he has four months in which to justify Houllier's faith and force his way to the front of Roger Lemerre's thoughts.