It is one of the great stories of football folklore.
He played less than an hour of top flight football in his entire career, yet Ali Dia’s name is known to every fan up and down the country.
The truth about his bizarre stint at Southampton has always been hazy, but the received wisdom went something like this: someone purporting to be former world player of the year George Weah called then-Southampton boss Graeme Souness and told him about a young free agent he would be mad not to sign.
Dia completed one training session with the Saints before Souness – desperate for numbers in the middle of an injury crisis – named Dia on the bench for a Premier League match against Leeds United at the Dell, exactly 20 years ago today.
Some 30 minutes into the game Matt Le Tissier is forced off with an injury, and Souness decides to throw on his new signing.
Dia emerged onto the pitch and almost scored in the first few minutes before revealing himself to be way out of his depth, and forcing a red-faced Souness to sub him off with five minutes left.
Ali Dia – Sunday league player who got to the premier league (Southampton) https://t.co/a14XEuZHfs
— ƝᗩŢꀌᗩƝ ƤᗩŁŁĕŢŢ (@njpallett) November 23, 2016
After a brief appearance at the club the following day for some physio treatment, he disappeared, leaving Southampton’s bemused players to wonder what the hell that was all about – and Souness to ponder who exactly had phoned him up pretending to be Weah.
After that he went on to play briefly for non-league side Gateshead, but then little was known about his fate. He became a myth, a legend – perhaps the perpetrator of the greatest con the Premier League had ever known.
And no one knew where he was or what really became of him.
Until now.
Kelly Naqi of Bleacher Report has finally tracked down the most elusive man in the history of English football, and has two astonishing claims.
We've found Ali Dia. It is time to finally tell the complete story of the Premier League's most unlikely ever player https://t.co/bPL2uChcz9 pic.twitter.com/3wUVqQx0ns
— B/R Football (@brfootball) November 23, 2016
Firstly: his name is not Ali Dia at all, but rather Aly Dia, with a ‘y’. Naqi’s report says: “FA records confirm Southampton finalised its contract with a player named Aly Dia on Nov. 22, 1996.”
And secondly: the man who has eluded detection for 20 years now lives not in his home country of Senegal, or France, where he claimed to have played for Paris Saint-Germain, or Saudi Arabia as some had suggested, but rather… in London.
Naqi travelled to Dakar in Senegal and met Dia’s mother and father, a retired school teacher and retired diplomat respectively, who put her in touch with their son, who now works in the business sector.
After initially insisting he did not want to talk, Dia eventually relented, and said his casting as some kind of con man is unfair.
#OnThisDay in 1996, Ali Dia played 53 Premier League minutes for Southampton after telling Graeme Souness he was George Weah's cousin. pic.twitter.com/KWWLPpd5ZW
— betclever US (@betcleverUS) November 23, 2016
“They have portrayed me as a liar, and that is bull,” he told her, insisting that he did play for PSG in the late 1980s.
And as for his infamous spell at Southampton? Well, for starters, he claims Souness had seen him play a reserve game at least.
“I trained against the first team, on the reserve team, for two weeks,” he said. “[Southampton] knew my abilities. There was a final game before the Leeds game—11 on 11—and I scored two or three goals. I was on fire.
Picture: Craig Prentis/Allsport UK“I earned the spot to be there. Souness said, ‘You are in for tomorrow, be ready.’ I was not expecting to start. Then the next thing you know, Le Tissier gets injured and I go in. No warm-ups, I just go in.”
And we all know what happened next.
So how does he look back on it all?
“I have a clear conscience. God is going to be our judge,” he says.
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