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He was like a headless chicken, but the funny thing was he was running everywhere the ball wasn’t – I think he was trying to avoid it “Terry Cooper suggested that maybe we should register him for just one game and if he has to go on, he has to go on. And lo and behold, someone was injured within 20 minutes of the kick-off so we had to throw him on. It was quite remarkable as 
he went for about half an hour without touching the ball. I’d never seen that before.” Le Tissier had never witnessed anything like it either, in 16 years as a Southampton player. “He was like a headless chicken, but the funny thing was he was running everywhere the ball wasn’t – I think he was trying to avoid it,” he says. “I suppose he thought that if he didn’t touch the ball no one would ever get to see just how bad he was.” On Tuesday December 3, 1996, the Echo reported that Dia had been released by the club “following his dismal showing against Leeds”. NEXT: Dia hits the north-east South coast to north-east The Ali Dia story doesn't end there, though – far from it. Eleven days after leaving the south coast – with an unpaid hotel bill that the club had to stump up for, according to Le Tiss – he reappeared in the north-east. Again, no one at Gateshead, Spennymoor Town and Blyth Spartans – where he played a handful of games – had the first idea of where Dia is now. The series of further calls did, however, unearth some valuable insights into a player who must 
surely rank as the most unlikely folk hero in English football history. “He got a £1,500 signing-on fee – I know that because the supporters' club paid it,” says Mickey Barrass of Gateshead’s Heed Army website. After trousering that, he even scored on his debut in a 5-0 win in front of 423 fans at the Gateshead International Stadium. Bursts of blistering pace apart, Dia’s performances, after his initial success, went downhill. Fast. “He was a one-off, that’s for sure: he invited us to come over and watch him play in the Africa Cup of Nations,” chuckles Paul Thompson, who played up front with Dia during his eight-match spell at Gateshead. “He was a poor man’s Tino Asprilla. In one game I went round the keeper and shot towards goal. Ali was celebrating the ball going in and was looking up to the sky. The ball ended up hitting him and going wide. “When he first came, he used to go on about his Mercedes too – he didn’t tell us it was 15 years old! When he drove this banger into the car park we all fell about laughing.” Ginola's pal When new manager Jim Platt inherited Dia he was similarly unimpressed, sending him on as a substitute against Slough Town with 10 minutes to go, before hauling him off again with four minutes remaining. Eventually Dia was released by the Conference side, but in typical style, that didn’t signal the end for the ever-persistent striker. Dia claimed he'd played with David Ginola in Paris, producing a picture of him and the French international to back up his story “One night after training, our reserve team manager at the time (former Newcastle striker Alan Shoulder) pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket,” says Gateshead’s then owner, John Gibson. “He said that some guy had turned up unannounced at training and joined in with the boys. The player then told Shoulder that he thought he could do a job for the club and wanted to sign for them. It was Ali Dia. You couldn’t make it up.” FFT contacted some of Dia’s ‘former clubs’ to verify his involvement with the likes of Bologna and PSG; neither had any record of him having played for them, despite Dia claiming he'd played with David Ginola in Paris, producing a picture of him and the French international to back up his story. “I obviously knew David through my work with Newcastle and he didn’t know who the hell Dia was – when he saw the picture he said it was the kind of snap that people took with him whenever he set foot inside a Newcastle nightclub,” says Gibson. “Dia was a bit of a Walter Mitty – I think he got into the situation of believing all of his own bullshit. The funniest thing is that his original story never made sense either: he was supposed to be a cousin or friend of George Weah, but Weah was from Liberia, not Senegal!” Gibson admits that Dia was a highly likable character, and despite the fans watching their £1,500 investment going down the pan, he was also a crowd favorite. “He just loved the fans singing his name,” says Barrass. “Even when we were singing ‘Ali Dia, is a liar, is a liar’, he would have a huge grin on his face.” Last of his kind? Souness told me that George [Weah] ring him and say I am a good player… I am a good player, I can prove I am a good player It’s unlikely that Souness was smiling when he found out he'd been duped, but the identity of the man who made the original call to the Scot has never been confirmed. It’s safe to assume that Weah – who vehemently denied any involvement – had better things to do with his time. When asked for his explanation two months after the Premier League’s most famous solo appearance, Dia was predictably enigmatic. “He [Souness] told me that George called him and said I am a good player… I am a good player, I can prove I am a good player,” he said. So who was it on the other end of the receiver to Souness? “Personally, like I told you, I don’t really know.” So that’s that cleared up, then. “It happened all the time back then,” says Strachan. “I had someone pestering me for a long time telling me that he was a top player in the amateur league in London. Then I went to Southampton and signed a guy called [Agustin] Delgado and his translator came with him. “I recognised the translator’s name and asked him if he was the same guy who kept calling me at Coventry. He stumbled for a bit and then admitted it. So this top player had all of sudden become a translator – and he wasn’t very good at that either.” Dia had no need for a translator; his English was passable. The same could not be said for his football – so bad it’s understandable why he’s disappeared without a trace. “It happened all the time back then,” says Strachan. “I had someone pestering me for a long time telling me that he was a top player in the amateur league in London. Then I went to Southampton and signed a guy called [Agustin] Delgado and his translator came with him. “I recognised the translator’s name and asked him if he was the same guy who kept calling me at Coventry. He stumbled for a bit and then admitted it. So this top player had all of sudden become a translator – and he wasn’t much good at that either.” Dia had no need for a translator; his English was passable. The same could not be said for his football – so bad it’s understandable why he’s disappeared without a trace. He was like a headless chicken, but the funny thing was he was running everywhere the ball wasn’t – I think he was trying to avoid it “Terry Cooper suggested that maybe we should register him for just one game and if he has to go on, he has to go on. And lo and behold, someone was injured within 20 minutes of the kick-off so we had to throw him on. It was quite remarkable as 
he went for about half an hour without touching the ball. I’d never seen that before.” Le Tissier had never witnessed anything like it either, in 16 years as a Southampton player. “He was like a headless chicken, but the funny thing was he was running everywhere the ball wasn’t – I think he was trying to avoid it,” he says. “I suppose he thought that if he didn’t touch the ball no one would ever get to see just how bad he was.” On Tuesday December 3, 1996, the Echo reported that Dia had been released by the club “following his dismal showing against Leeds”. NEXT: Dia hits the north-east South coast to north-east The Ali Dia story doesn't end there, though – far from it. Eleven days after leaving the south coast – with an unpaid hotel bill that the club had to stump up for, according to Le Tiss – he reappeared in the north-east. Again, no one at Gateshead, Spennymoor Town and Blyth Spartans – where he played a handful of games – had the first idea of where Dia is now. The series of further calls did, however, unearth some valuable insights into a player who must 
surely rank as the most unlikely folk hero in English football history. “He got a £1,500 signing-on fee – I know that because the supporters' club paid it,” says Mickey Barrass of Gateshead’s Heed Army website. After trousering that, he even scored on his debut in a 5-0 win in front of 423 fans at the Gateshead International Stadium. Bursts of blistering pace apart, Dia’s performances, after his initial success, went downhill. Fast. “He was a one-off, that’s for sure: he invited us to come over and watch him play in the Africa Cup of Nations,” chuckles Paul Thompson, who played up front with Dia during his eight-match spell at Gateshead. “He was a poor man’s Tino Asprilla. In one game I went round the keeper and shot towards goal. Ali was celebrating the ball going in and was looking up to the sky. The ball ended up hitting him and going wide. “When he first came, he used to go on about his Mercedes too – he didn’t tell us it was 15 years old! When he drove this banger into the car park we all fell about laughing.” Ginola's pal When new manager Jim Platt inherited Dia he was similarly unimpressed, sending him on as a substitute against Slough Town with 10 minutes to go, before hauling him off again with four minutes remaining. Eventually Dia was released by the Conference side, but in typical style, that didn’t signal the end for the ever-persistent striker. Dia claimed he'd played with David Ginola in Paris, producing a picture of him and the French international to back up his story.