So, after five years at Chelsea, Frank Leboeuf is off to Marseille - a club that only last year he said he would never join. A contradiction? Of course, but Leboeuf was full of them.
He loved Chelsea but spent the last 18 months there trying to leave. He moaned about the "extremely violent" nature of English football, but was banned for stamping on Harry Kewell. He was erudite and intelligent but didn't know how to hold his tongue.
But that was Leboeuf: provocative, disruptive and a free-firing quote machine.
"In all my career, I've never seen such horrible training conditions," he let slip to France Soir about Chelsea's facilities in March 2000. "We train in a place which is not functional, open to winds between the motorway and the coffee smells from the nearby plant," he added. "Every morning at 10.45, the coach must stop talking because Concorde is flying past."
At the time, most Chelsea fans were amused by Frank's cheek and supreme confidence. Then, five months later, he played a significant role in their hero Gianluca Vialli's downfall. "Vialli has problems with everybody, with Albert Ferrer and many others," he told the French press. "It's normal for a coach to get along with his lads, but not him." His position undermined, Vialli was unable to survive a poor start to the season, and exactly a month after Leboeuf struck he was sacked.
But it wasn't just Chelsea who felt the force of Leboeuf's tongue. Dennis Bergkamp was "a very good player but a shit man." David Beckham was "too arrogant. He's got a lot to learn about football." And Alan Hansen, who dared to suggest that Chelsea had too many foreign defenders to function as a unit after their 2-1 away defeat at Everton last season, was told his comments were: "not only xenophobic but rubbish".
Despite his all-too-frequent histrionics, Leboeuf could talk sense too. He urged English players to follow Steve McManaman's example and play on the continent, claiming: "If you look at the statistics, the best teams are the ones with players playing abroad.
"They learn the culture of the country they are in, then introduce this into the national team set-up," he added. "That way they are more adept at handling the situations international football throws up.'
But most fans didn't see that side of Leboeuf. Instead, they saw him as arrogant and aloof; the man that appears on 'They Think It's All Over' after winning the 1998 World Cup and repeating the phrase "I won 'ze World Cup" over and over again.
It was supposed to be a joke but it backfired badly. And he began to be known more for his diving and whining rather than as the ball-playing defender who took Chelsea - who were, it's worth remembering, not a big club before he joined - to two FA Cups, the Coca-Cola Cup, the Cup Winners' Cup, the Super Cup and the Champions League quarter-finals.
With the arrival of Claudio Ranieri, Leboeuf saw his dream of ending his career at Chelsea given a sharp jolt. He had to move on. And despite last year dismissing a move to France as "a step back," and despite claiming he would never move to Marseille after fans verbally abused his family during a Champions League match, today he announced he's doing just that.
Why? Well, despite appearances, the firebrand is also a pragmatist: Leboeuf knows he is behind Desailly, Gallas and Terry in the Chelsea line-up - and that won't do when there's a World Cup around the corner. The egoiste in Leboeuf would prefer to be courted by Monaco or Real Madrid, but that hasn't happened. So Marseille and France it is. But don't be surprised if this time next year he's making another TV appearance to tell us how he won "ze World Cup" over again.