Six years on from his last Premier League appearance, Alex Song is celebrating a league title with Arta/Solar 7 in Djibouti's top flight.
The well-backed champions sealed the deal with a comprehensive 12-1 victory over bottom-of-the-table Arhiba, ending the campaign with just one defeat in their 18 matches.
However, while Song is enjoying the twilight years of his career with successive title wins, his priorities have been what you might call varied.
Now 34 years of age, the former Arsenal and West Ham United midfielder has been open about accepting the trade-off of less playing time but more money at a key point in his trajectory. Indeed, his comments about young footballers living beyond their means probably counts as an all-too-brutal level of honesty from someone who many fans will put in the category of "what might have been".
Song's career began similarly to many others who make a big impression as a youngster. After breaking into the Bastia first team as a teenager, he was snapped up by Arsenal as manager Arsene Wenger looked to fill the Patrick Vieira-shaped hole in the Gunners' midfield.
"He is only 18 but from what I have seen he is a very good player," Wenger said at the time. However, Song would need to wait for regular first team football in north London, and a loan switch to Charlton Athletic brought the pain of relegation as well as some important Premier League minutes.
Perhaps more significantly, though, Song was beginning to earn Premier League money and starting to see what that could get you.
"Most footballers live beyond their means," Song would later say in an Instagram Live chat with the Cameroonian basketball star Pascal Siakam. "I was at Arsenal for eight years but only began to earn a good living in the last four.
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"When I first joined them I was getting £15,000 a week. I was a young lad, and I was ecstatic.
"I wanted to rub shoulders with the big boys. I could shop wherever I wanted and have crazy nights out. During my entire time at Arsenal I couldn’t even save £100,000, while people thought I must be a millionaire."
As he acknowledged, it was not until his later years in north London when the money coming in came in line with the lifestyle. A bumper new contract in 2009 was just reward for a breakthrough season, and he only kicked on from there.
Ask many Arsenal fans how they remember Song and emotions may be mixed. There were good times, sure, but also there was a sense he left when things were just getting started.
In the 2011-12 season, he finished the campaign with 11 assists - more than any other Arsenal player, and just four shy of the Premier League high mark set by Manchester City's David Silva, Many of those came for Robin van Persie, who was himself enjoying a standout season in front of goal to drag Wenger's side to third place, and the sight of Song lifting perfectly-weighted passes beyond a defensive line for the Dutchman to fire home feel as vivid today as they did 10 years ago.
As much as many hoped Van Persie would stay, there was a sense of inevitability as soon as he spoke of his inner child telling him to join Man Utd. Song's departure for Barcelona felt like less of a certainty, but the midfielder's reflection on the move perhaps changed some minds years later.
"When Barcelona offered me a contract and I saw how much I would earn, I didn’t think twice," he told Siakam in that same chat. "I felt my wife and children should have comfortable lives once my career is over," he added.
"I met Barca’s sporting director, and he told me I would not get to play many games. But I didn’t give a f*** – I knew that now I would become a millionaire."
Song's first season in Catalunya brought a league title, with the Cameroonian playing 20 times in the league for Tito Vilanova's side. However, despite putting pen to paper on a five-year deal in 2012, his final game for the club would be the May 2014 draw with Atletico Madrid which ensured Diego Simeone's side won La Liga at Barca's expense.
If the plan was for the Catalan club to cash in, an infamous red card for Cameroon at the 2014 World Cup put paid to that. There weren't many who would want a man seen chasing elbow-first after Mario Mandzukic on live TV, but West Ham manager Sam Allardyce wasn't entirely put off.
For half a season in east London, Song was back at something close to his best. Sure, it might have looked better because we were viewing him in comparison to a group of players who had recorded the third-fewest shots and second-fewest passes in the entire Premier League the season prior,
Some West Ham supporters may feel he was never the same after conceding the late penalty which saw Tottenham come from 2-0 down to claim a point against Allardyce's side, while others may feel the tipping point came earlier. Either way, his second season on loan was less successful than the first, and he eventually moved on with spells in Russia, Switzerland and, finally, Djibouti.
Arta/Solar 7 are an outlier in Djibouti football when it comes to finances, with huge investment allowing them to bring Song - and a number of other African stars - to a country whose national side has never played at a World Cup or Africa Cup of Nations. Song's former West Ham teammate Diafra Sakho is also part of the squad, as are former Cameroon goalkeeper Carlos Kameni and Burkina Faso international Alain Traore.
They romped to the title last season and did the same this term, but things have been tougher in continental competition. Arta/Solar 7 failed to get beyond the qualifying rounds of the CAF Champions League this season, losing 4-1 on aggregate to Tusker of Kenya, while their 2020-21 CAF Confederation Cup campaign ended in a 10-1 aggregate defeat to Mohamed Salah's former club Al Mokawloon.
Ten years ago this month, Song was earning one of his 11 Premier League assists as Yossi Benayoun scored in Arsenal's win at Wolverhampton Wanderers. The achievement in east Africa is undoubtedly a different kind of success.
