Cut & pasted from a dodgy signings website. No mention of Kevin Dixon or Peter Sand tho. Ali Dia - Southampton In 1996 Graeme Souness immortalised himself in football folklore by falling for an amazing scam that resulted in him signing a player, so bad, that it made Gerard Houllier’s decision to buy Bruno Cheyrou look inspirational. It all started when Ali Dia, a desperate 30 year-old nobody, convinced his agent to phone the Southampton boss pretending to be World Footballer of the Year George Weah recommending ‘his cousin’ (Ali Dia) as the next big thing. Souness fell for it quicker than Robert Pires looking for a penalty and Dia was instantly signed up on a month’s loan. As you can imagine, Souness was eager to see what his new acquisition could do, but the Gods of Football Humour were smiling down on the Dell and a proposed reserve game, and Dia’s debut, against Arsenal was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. That close shave didn’t deter the ‘striker’ who tried to build up his credentials by saying, “I feel I have a bit of pace and I can dribble well. Hopefully I can now show enough of that to the manager and maybe get a place in his squad.” Once again, Souness took the bait and Dia suddenly found himself on the bench in Southampton’s next game against Leeds. But the unthinkable was to follow. Despite Souness never seeing Dia kick a ball, he brought him off the bench. After one minute the whole crowd had to pinch themselves, trying not to believe that Coco The Clown was playing. Dia had the touch of an elephant and the deadliness of a fly. He couldn’t control a ball to save his life and after 14 minutes of 'Bambi on ice' the substitute was substituted, and his loan rapidly terminated. After such a humiliation, you would expect that Souness would have learnt his lesson about taking on a player who clearly can’t play football. I guess this wouldn’t be the right time to mention the £7m he spent on Corrado Grabbi then… oops! Ali Dia and Graeme Souness… we salute you! Chris Sutton (Chelsea) Carlton Palmer (Stockport) Yoshi Kawaguchi (Portsmouth) Adi Akinbiyi (Leicester) Massimo Taibi (Man U)
