Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

“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 ring him and say 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. In the modern era, with internet records of every player available at the click of a mouse, it’s unlikely that Dia’s wool-pulling feats will ever be repeated. In the 1990s, though, he wasn’t alone in peddling scarcely believable wares. “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.