The ‘brutal’ real reason why Dimitri Payet left West Ham, in his own words

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It was a very sad day indeed when Dimitri Payet left West Ham United in January 2017.

Payet recently spoke about how he loved playing for West Ham at Upton Park, and that makes the London Stadium move even harder to swallow.

Dimitri Payet was a class unto his own during his spell with West Ham, and there was one point during the 2015/16 season when he was undoubtedly one of the best players in the world.

He left the London Stadium eight years ago to link up with his former club Marseille after bagging 15 goals and 22 assists in 60 games for the Hammers.

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Michail Antonio is one player who has since spoken out about how gutted he was when West Ham sold Payet.

But could the club have done more to keep him?

The ‘brutal’ real reason why Dimitri Payet left West Ham

The Frenchman was a true cult hero during his time with the Hammers.

However, his exit from the London Stadium left a sour taste in the West Ham fans’ mouths.

It still hurts to this day how he left the club.

That said, back in 2022, Payet lifted the lid on the real reason why he left West Ham:

“Sure, the Premier League helped me to realise a dream, I suppose. To play in the Premier League and to play in England because everyone dreams about playing here, particularly now when you look at the teams who are playing in the Premier League, it is getting stronger and stronger and a really tough league to play in.

“I spent 18 months full of emotions, excitement after Euro 2016 but no I don’t have any regrets,“ Payet said. It was a choice I made, a personal choice and a family-based choice as well. Since I left West Ham I have stayed at Marseille, I haven’t gone to any other club and don’t intend on going to any other club, so it wasn’t leaving for the sake of leaving.

“It was a personal decision, a family decision and yeah, it was a pretty brutal break I suppose when I left, that’s true, but I hope over the course of the years West Ham fans have come to understand why I left, I would certainly like and hope to think that.”

Well, since then Payet has obviously left Marseille.

He is currently out in Brazil with Vasco da Gama, after joining them in the summer of 2023.

The Frenchman is 37 now, and he will surely be hanging up his boots soon.

It’s just incredibly frustrating to think that we probably didn’t even see the best of Payet at West Ham. The board should have pushed harder to keep him in my opinion.

Incredible Dimitri Payet numbers a match for the world’s best

Aside from strikers, Mesut Ozil and Riyad Mahrez were the only two players who racked up more goals and assists than Payet during the 2015/16 Premier League campaign.

That’s quite the company that Payet was keeping isn’t it.

The Frenchman was truly sensational for the Hammers, and we haven’t had a player anywhere near as good as him since he left us eight years ago.

If only West Ham had managed to keep hold of Dimitri Payet for a few more years, and the owners actually showed some real ambition, there’s no telling where we’d be now.

In all fairness to the Hammers though, it’s clear that family reasons were the driving force behind Payet’s London Stadium exit.