AuthorJeffEyesRimmer It was a swindle so brilliant that it has gone down in Premier League folklore. Back in 1996 the Premier League was still in its infancy, Manchester United was the reigning EPL champions, Aston Villa were in Europe and Manchester City had been relegated the season before. All change now right. With the scouting networks, the internet, the technology we have for football stats, the sheer volume of football shown on TV, even Football Manager, it really is hard to imagine these days that such a con could ever happen. So what con are we referring to? Well none other than Ali Dia, the unknown footballer come EPL striker, always the number 1 worst player to play in the EPL pick and really an enigma of the game. It is exactly 20 years to the day that Ali Dia made his fated and only appearance in the Premier League. That appearance came for Southampton against Leeds on the 23rd November 1996. A day that will haunt Saints fans to this day. He came on for Matt Le Tissier (a favourite of ours) on 33 minutes but after an awful showing was then subbed off on 86 minutes. Dia’s premier league showing was only 52 minutes long; Matt Le Tissier described him as ‘looking like Bambi on ice’. Following that horror showing on debut Dia went to the club doctor and said he was injured, then to never show up at training or at Southampton again. He had simply vanished, but that wasn’t the first time he had done so or would even be the last. So what is the con? Well first it’s important to take a step back and learn about the player that was Ali Dia and how he has come to be known at the worst EPL player of all time. Dias con was an impersonation act and looking back a bit of a daft one that wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny now, but at the time, with no real internet to look up players it seems quite reasonable why it would work. Dia or a friend would ring up perspective football clubs and claim to be an agent. The ‘agent’ would indicate that Dia was a former PSG player (yep that PSG), say he was a Senegalese international and was George Weahs (yep that George Weah) cousin and that he was available for a trial. Now with hindsight we can fact check, there wasn’t a player that played for PSG called Ali Dia, or any international players with that name playing for Senegal and George Weah is Liberian. Quite the little white lie but one that was believed by many clubs. The story of the Ali Dia begins in France, where in actual fact the name used was Aly Dia and he first surfaced for AL Chateaubriant. They were a club that were in the National League Tier three, the equivalent of the fifth tier of French football. This is a rag to riches tale after all. He didn’t play there, more worked with the youth side but eventually found his way to Avignon. Again no game time lead to Dia looking elsewhere to play and he found his break in of all places…Finland. In 1995, Dia joined Finnairin Palloilijat, and former teammates would tell of his stories of Weah. He was telling the little porkys back then too. He played 5 times for them, no goals and then vanished but stayed in Finland and ended up at PK-35. A big highlight of Dias career came here; he made 3 appearances and managed a goal but again vanished very quickly. No one knew what happened to him but in the autumn of 1995 he had earned a contract with the German second division side VfB Lubeck. The lie continued but to be fair to Dia he had been given a chance to impress for Lubeck and in a trial match he scored 5 goals. Enough to give any manager thought and he won the right to a contract. That contract lasted 2 games and again the vanishing act. After his German adventure Dia had made the trip to England, where the riches were higher. After arriving he looked to have trials at several clubs, including Gillingham, Rotherham and Stockport but failed to make the grade. Consequently he dropped into Non-league and ended up at Blyth Spartans. He managed to get one substitute appearance in before again completely disappearing. And so to Southampton and that one appearance, because the next time Blyth Spartan players heard of Dia he was on the bench for Southampton against Leeds. In the time between an ‘agent’, possibly even Dia himself, had called Graeme Souness, the then Southampton manager and told him the famous tale. That Dia was a Seneglese international that had played for PSG and was the cousin of George Weah and Souness gave him a shot. One thing we always wondered was how on earth did he get Graeme Souness phone number in the first place? The Southampton players at the time that played with him at training indicated that he was hopeless and what prompted the inclusion of him on the bench we won’t likely know but the injury to Le Tissier meant that a legend was born on 33 minutes. The stats are a thing of beauty:
A month contract with Southampton was terminated midway through but Dia had already done a runner by that point and he ended up at Gateshead. He was signed for the remainder of the 1996 season in December and reliving his early promise in Germany Dia scored on his debut for Gateshead. It was at this point the lie became public, with the Mirror exposing the story for the fake it was. Dia continued with the con though, indicating he had recently scored for Senegal against Guinea in a 3-1 win. They never played each other that season, just the brass balls to keep up with the lie was fantastic. He continued to play for Gateshead into the 1997 to 1998 season but as was his modus operandi he disappeared again that season. So what happened to him then? Well therein lays the mystery, as he had done so many times previously he simply vanished and has not been heard of since. They were rumours of him completing a business degree in London but privacy rules prevent further information being provided. We wont know either if the story of Ali Dia was the inspiration for Alex Zarrelli who also attempted a similar con in 2003. Zarrelli is still playing but perhaps thats an article for another day. It’s funny to look back now because the sheer audacity of it all is breathtaking and we will never see the like of it again in our technology fuelled age. So somewhere out there is Ali Dia, a true legend of the Premier League Era. Image: http://alchetron.com/Ali-Dia-500997-W#-
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