David Trezeguet. You may have heard of him. Played for France’s World Cup champions in 1998. Spent a decade at Juventus and scored 138 goals.

Also got the golden goal (remember the short history of that arrangement?) in the 2000 European championships, winning it 2-1 for France over Italy.

Well, Trezeguet is 34 now, and clearly near the end of his career, but a rising UAE club, Baniyas, which is located about 25 miles outside of Abu Dhabi, the capital, signed him back in the summer.

Baniyas was a surprise second in the Pro League last season, and they apparently were looking for a little firepower to push them to the top, and if some notoriety for signing a big name came their way, too … well, great.

It didn’t work out. Trezeguet played bits of three matches, didn’t score … left the country.

It was not really clear to me what happened … until I spoke with some of the Baniyas executives today.

They are a little touchy about suggestions that they made a horrendous mistake. They do not want Trezeguet lumped in with Fabio Cannavaro as one of the biggest busts in UAE football history.

Here is their case:

1. Before they had been in contact with Trezeguet, according to Saif Al Khaily, their deputy chairman, the player had indicated an interest in the UAE and in Baniyas in particular. Basically, then: “Dude said he wanted to play for us.”

2. They brought him in on a one-year deal, for perhaps as much as 1.8 million euro ($2.4 million). But the club did not pay him anything resembling the full amount of whatever the contract was worth, because he bailed. (“So don’t suggest we gave $2.4 million to the guy, OK?”)

3. Trezeguet approached club officials, within a month of two of arriving here, and asked to leave. And, Baniyas says, he said something along the lines of, “It’s not you, it’s me.” The deputy chairman told me Trezeguet said it wasn’t the club, the players or the country … he just couldn’t adapt.

4. Before agreeing to let him go, the club got back some of the bonus money they had given him. (“We spent even less than the amount that was far less than everyone thinks we spent.”)

5. And, when Trezeguet subsequently turned up at River Plate, in Argentina, and scored a couple of goals in his first three matches there for the famous club (which has been relegated, by the way) … well, that is proof to Baniyas guys that the man can still actually play, as they believed. So he was not washed up, see?

He just couldn’t play for them … here.

(Oh, a side note: I rarely saw Trezeguet play in his prime, and the buzz around him was … he cannot create his own chances. He needs someone to bring him the ball, and get him into situations where he can score … and he often will. And this is pertinent because Baniyas had none of its midfielders playing with Trezeguet while he was here because they were off with the national team.)

An expanded version of all that is in this story that I did for The National.

Baniyas people are a little embarrassed, I think, over how this went down, and more than a little annoyed that they are being mocked pretty much universally for having spent a lot of money on a guy who couldn’t play. It stings. Especially because the club is ninth in the table two-thirds of the way through the season.

They insist that they didn’t spend all that much money, and he still can play, and the suggestion is … “how were we to know he couldn’t deal with being here” (heat, culture, language barriers, whatever) … “when he apparently didn’t know himself?”

Interesting.

Also, it was good to make some contact with Baniyas. A fascinating club, attempting to join the ranks of “big” UAE sides after decades in a lower division … flies a bit under the radar, lots of young talent. They could be very good in a year or two. We as a newspaper needed to get to know some of the key folks there.

I did … and now we have their side of events on the David Trezeguet Experiment.