Football makes us do funny things, like hug strangers and talk about ‘war chests’. It also scrambles our senses so we find ourselves screaming obscenities in the presence of children and forgetting that those we scream at, specifically the players, are human beings. Rich and famous, but human all the same.

That means they, like us, can struggle to adapt to new surroundings, especially if those new surroundings are a new country. A different language, a different culture, a different way of living have to be mastered yet many supporters and observers expect players in that position to hit the ground running. Those who fail to do so are questioned almost immediately, written off before they’ve had time to properly unpack. In this country they quickly become known as ‘flops’, which is basically the ignorant’s code for foreigners who are all style and no substance.

What is required is proof that, given time to adjust, it is possible for an overseas player to display both style and substance on foreign soil. In truth there are plenty of examples, but perhaps none more emphatic than Robert Pires. A new arrival to these shores at the beginning of a new millennium, the Frenchman initially struggled at Arsenal. By the time he departed six years later, however, there was no doubting Pires’s worth, not only to his club but to English football as a whole. ‘Bobby’ was incredible. More than that, he was invincible.

Arsène Wenger has described Pires as the “oil in the engine” of the Arsenal team that were crowned Premier League champions in 2004 having gone through the entire campaign unbeaten as well of as the team that won the double two years earlier when, according to the player himself, he was at his peak. “The 2001-02 season was the best in my entire career,” Pires reflected in a Sky Sports programme dedicated to him and simply entitled: ‘PL Legends’. “I played my best football; whenever I tried anything it would come off.”

That was no more clear than at Villa Park on 17 March 2002 when Pires scored a goal that sealed his status as a player of sublime ingenuity, skill and confidence. As the Guardian’s former football correspondent David Lacey wrote at the time: “Seldom can impudence and insolence have been so sweetly entwined”. Commenting for Sky Sports, Martin Tyler described it as a “golden goal scored by a player in a golden shirt”.

To fully appreciate what Pires did against Aston Villa it is worth remembering just how difficult it was for the player in those early days at Arsenal. He arrived from Marseille for £6m in July 2000 as a replacement for Marc Overmars, but brought with him different capabilities to those of the Dutchman. Overmars was all searing pace and power while Pires, aged 26 and a member of a France squad that had just been crowned European champions, was a more technical left-sided winger; able to keep and distribute the ball with either foot but slight in frame and short of aggression. In other words, someone who could struggle with the rigours of the English game.

That is why Wenger decided to name Pires among Arsenal’s substitutes for their first match of the 2000-01 season – an away game at Sunderland. The manager wanted his compatriot to watch Premier League action in the flesh before stepping into the fray, and while Pires “wasn’t very happy” with the decision he accepted it and took his place in the visitors’ dugout at the Stadium of Light, sat between Dennis Bergkamp and Lauren.

What Pires observed – and experienced having come on for Freddie Ljungberg as a 66th-minute substitute – was classic Premier League; a full-throttle contest in both tempo and competitiveness. It ended with Patrick Vieira being sent off in second-half injury time for striking Darren Williams and Arsenal losing 1-0 having conceded Niall Quinn’s 53rd minute header.

Pires was left feeling shellshocked, with his decision to reject Real Madrid in favour of Arsenal suddenly appearing a mistake: “After 20 minutes I said to myself: ‘What am I doing here? This football isn’t for me, it’s not possible’.”

Robert Pires shoots having held off a challenge from Lgor Mitreski during Arsenal’s 1-0 Champions League home victory over Spartak Moscow in the 2000-01 season, the Frenchman’s first at the London club. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Allsport

Pires started Arsenal’s next match, the 2-0 home victory over Liverpool (when Vieira was yet again sent off), and scored his first goal for the club in October’s 1-1 draw with Lazio in the Champions League, but by the Frenchman’s own admission he “really struggled” during the first six months of his time in England, with no image encapsulating that better than the one of him looking disconsolate and dispirited having been knocked to the turf by Alf Inge-Haaland during Arsenal’s 5-0 win against Manchester City at Highbury on 28 October 2000. Pires’ attempt at dribbling with the ball from left to right across City’s area had come to a shuddering, seemingly illegal halt and the referee simply played on. For a player of such sensibilities it was a blow in more ways than one and the view among many was that Arsenal’s new No7 simply could not cut it.

It was during this time that Pires turned not only to Wenger for guidance and support but also to David Dein. The message from the club’s vice-chairman was to keep working hard and keep believing. There was also a more specific piece of advice: score against Tottenham. “I told Robert that would make him loved by Arsenal fans,” Dein says in the PL Legends documentary, with the player taking those words fully on board. He ultimately scored eight goals in 12 games against ‘the enemy’, with his first coming in a 2-0 win at Highbury on 31 March 2001. Another followed in the FA Cup semi-final victory over Spurs at Old Trafford eight days later. It was the winner – Arsenal were on their way to Cardiff, where they would dominate proceedings but lose to a Michael Owen-inspired Liverpool.

Overall, Pires scored eight goals and assisted nine others for Arsenal during the 2000-01 season, a reasonable total given this was his debut campaign for a new team in a new country. More broadly, it was clear come May that the Frenchman had all but adapted to Premier League life. Those smooth, devastating technical abilities had come to the fore and were allied to a more robust approach in and out of possession. He was ready to kick on.

Pires scored 13 goals and created 13 more for Arsenal during the 2001-02 campaign and was named Football Writers’ Player of the Year, all of which was particularly impressive given he didn’t play after 23 March having suffered cruciate ligament damage in the 3-0 FA Cup quarter-final win over Newcastle, a match in which he had opened the scoring after just two minutes.

The injury ruled the Frenchman out of that summer’s World Cup and, more immediately, those glorious four days in May when Arsenal beat Chelsea at the Millennium Stadium and Manchester United at Old Trafford to seal a third double in the club’s history and the second of the Wenger era. But there was no forgetting Pires’ contribution to the success, seen most clearly when he lifted the Premier League trophy at the end of the final game of the season, a 4-3 victory over Everton and every member of the Arsenal squad bowed towards him. It was pure Wayne’s World: ‘We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy’.

“It was brilliant for me,” Pires says of the gesture. “And I remember that they [the Arsenal supporters] sang my name before, during and after the match: ‘Su-per, Su-per Rob, Su-per, Su-per Rob, Su-per, Su-per Rob, Super Robert Pi-res’.”.

Pires’s injury really did come at the worst time possible, not only denying him the chance to put the cap on a hugely satisfying season at club level and participating at a second successive World Cup for the then holders, but also halting a player when he was in full flight. After all, it was only six days prior to the Newcastle game that Pires scored what he describes as the best goal of his Arsenal career and what perhaps remains the single moment he is best remembered for.

Having fallen behind to Edu’s 15th-minute strike, Aston Villa decided to abandon their passive first-half approach and attacked with more intent and aggression after the interval. Their efforts appeared to have been rewarded when they earned a penalty, but Gareth Barry’s attempt from 12 yards was saved by David Seaman. Soon after, Arsenal sprung forward on the attack, with Freddie Ljungberg cutting out a pass from Villa’s left-back Jlloyd Samuel midway inside Arsenal’s half and swinging a long diagonal ball out to the opposite flank, where Pires was on a charging run and waiting to collect.

George Boateng had run back with the Arsenal winger and, as the ball drops out of the sky, the Dutch midfielder pressed himself up against his opponent and appeared to have cut out the danger. Pires – side on, facing away from goal and with a man literally on his back – had nowhere to go. Or at least that’s what Boateng and the rest of us thought ...

Having allowed the ball to bounce, Pires poked it over and in front of Boateng with his right foot before going around the same player on the opposite side. Suddenly he was one-on-one with Peter Schmeichel, who was stationed on the edge of his six-yard area and standing as tall as possible in order to make it as difficult as possible for the player in front of him to score. But Pires did not panic, and having allowed the ball a further two bounces he again used his right foot to lift it over the Villa goalkeeper and into the back of the net. It dropped like a stone in a pond, sending out ripples of astonishment.

Robert Pires lobs Peter Schmeichel to put Arsenal 2-0 up at Villa Park in March 2002

The goal may not have been the most breathtaking one scored by an Arsenal player that season – that accolade goes to Bergkamp for his burst of genius at St James’ Park a fortnight earlier – but it was, as Lacey put it, “a piece of outrageous individualism”, which Pires recognised himself judging by the way he celebrated having made fools of Boateng and Schmeichel, two experienced pros reduced to traffic cones. Running towards the Arsenal fans located behind the goal, the winger wagged his finger in their direction before waiting for his team-mates to join him by the corner flag. As they did, Pires nodded the most Gallic nod possible, that of a man saying: “Oui, je suis special”.

Pires describes the goal as “instinctive”, although having regularly practiced lobbing a goalkeeper during training sessions, the final part was somewhat premeditated. For the Arsenal blogger Tim Stillman, who was at Villa Park that Sunday afternoon, it is a moment which, 14 years on, remains as clear as it does joyful.

“I was stationed in the front row, peering though the goal net,” Stillman remembers. “I could see that Pires was faced up with Schmeichel, who I was parallel with at ground level. I urged Pires to pull the trigger, willing him to put his laces behind the ball. Fortunately, Robert Pires had a little more control over the situation than this anxiety-wracked teenager. He eschewed the jackhammer and reached for the paintbrush.

“Two weeks earlier I had been at St James’ Park when Dennis Bergkamp gaily laid waste to the laws of logic. The away end at Newcastle is so far away from the pitch that I simply did not appreciate the majesty of the goal in real time. With Pires’s goal I was literally front-row centre. It’s a poor view to watch a game from in truth, but for that one second it was the best seat in the house. For that reason, I have always prized Pires’s goal above Bergkamp’s.”

Robert Pires runs towards Arsenal’s celebrating supporters having made fools of an experienced Aston Villa side. Photograph: Tony O'Brien/Action Images

The goal was as crucial as it was eye-catching, ensuring Arsenal left Birmingham with a win after Dion Dublin had pulled one back for the hosts with a 69th-minute header. The three points put Wenger’s men just one behind the champions and leaders Manchester United with a game in hand, which they won. In fact, Arsenal won every one of their remaining eight fixtures to complete a quite remarkable sequence of 18 wins and three draws from 21 league matches stretching back to 23 December 2001.

Overall, Arsenal lost just three times during the 2001-02 season, and not once away from home. They also scored in each of their 38 contests and, through it all, had to cope with a host of long-term injuries to key players, including Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Lee Dixon, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and, of course, Pires. All of which made winning the double for a second time in four years particularly remarkable. And key to the success was the Frenchman with a sharp eye for a pass and a goal. Who knows how much more Pires would have contributed – for club and country – in 2002 had he not been stopped in his tracks by injury.

The player returned the following season, scoring 15 goals and assisting two others as Arsenal finished runners-up to United and won the FA Cup for a third time under Wenger, courtesy of a Pires goal in the final against Southampton. The following campaign saw Arsenal reclaim the title in remarkable fashion, with Pires more than playing his part, scoring 18 goals and assisting a further 12, with his strike in the title-clinching draw at White Hart Lane a standout memory for player and fans alike.

This was also a campaign, however, in which Pires displayed his devious side, specifically with a blatant and calculated dive in the 1-1 draw with Portsmouth in September 2003. Arsenal earned a penalty from it, having gone behind to Teddy Sheringham’s 26th-minute header, which Thierry Henry converted, and while it may be pushing it to say there would have been no Invincibles without Pires’s tumble to the turf – Arsenal may well have gone on to equalise regardless – it ultimately played a part.

But that is a small blemish on a record of outstanding achievement and the only regret, certainly for Pires himself, is that he did not finish his career at Arsenal. That was the plan but having endured a frustrating 2005-06 campaign, which culminated in him being substituted in May’s Champions League final defeat to Barcelona following Jens Lehmann’s 18th-minute sending-off, the player, by then aged 32, decided his time was up in north London and he joined Villarreal on a free transfer .

Robert Pires, left, in discussion with Arsène Wenger at Arsenal’s London Colney training base last November. Photograph: Dan Mullan/Getty Images

There came a return to England in 2010 – somewhat ironically at Villa – prior to a spell at FC Goa in India before Pires called it a day. He now works as a pundit for French TV while maintaining a presence at Arsenal’s London Colney base, partly to keep fit, partly to keep in touch with Wenger, whom he describes as a “father”, and partly so he can offer advice and support to Arsenal’s current squad.

For them and football followers in general, Pires is walking, talking proof that with a little time even the most brittle-looking of foreigners can soar in the Premier League. Or as Dein put it: “Robert will be remembered fondly by any one who appreciates good football. He brought a touch of class to the game.”