Does Diouf ever take a day off?
El-Hadji Diouf’s feud with Steven Gerrard is one of sport’s longest running beefs. These two former teammates just don’t like each other.
Diouf arrived at Liverpool for £10m back in 2002, after impressing in the World Cup for Senegal. However, the forward flopped at Anfield, staying for two seasons before joining Bolton Wanderers.
He’s best remembered for spitting at a Celtic fan, and getting on the wrong side of teammates such as Gerrard and Jamie Carragher.
“It’s common knowledge. Gerrard has never liked black people,” Diouf said back in 2015.
“When I was at Liverpool, I showed him I was black, that I wasn’t English, but that I’m no pushover. All the time I was there, he never dared looked me in the eye.”
After that incredible accusation of racism, Diouf took a pop at Gerrard’s ability as a footballer, and seemed to take pleasure in his infamous slip against Chelsea in 2014.
“When I arrived at Liverpool, seeing as I just did what I wanted, he thought that I did not respect the club. But he downright killed his team by slipping against Chelsea. If Liverpool has never won the Premier League, it’s no accident. What goes around, comes around.”
Diouf also called Carragher a “f****** loser.”
The former Rangers and Leeds United forward is now back home in Senegal and has given an interview to the BBC. Unsurprisingly, the topic of Gerrard came up.
Diouf said he has “no problem” with the former Liverpool captain, but also said Gerrard “never did anything for his country” before referring to himself in the third person.
“He is a strong character and I am a strong character,” said Diouf, who now works as a “goodwill ambassador” for the Senegalese government – the most ironic job title since the United Nations appointed Tony Blair as peace envoy for the Middle East.
“‘Stevie G’ was a very good player. People like him in Liverpool but he never did anything for his country. I am Mr El Hadji Diouf, Mr Senegal but he is Mr Liverpool and Senegal is bigger than Liverpool and he has to know that.”
Diouf went on to compare himself to Diego Maradona.
“We put Senegal on the world map,” he said about the 2002 World Cup, when Senegal were knocked out by Turkey in the quarter-finals.
“Before the World Cup nobody knew Senegal, but after the World Cup everybody wanted to know where Senegal was. What Maradona did for his country is what I did for Senegal. I was one of the biggest men at the 2002 World Cup.”
The fact Argentina, who won the World Cup in 1978, were already “on the world map” before Maradona’s team won the competition in 1986, seems to be lost on Diouf.
As does the fact Maradona is one of the greatest players ever, and Diouf was relegated from the Championship with Doncaster Rovers.
