I am hoping that someone can shed light on El-Hadji Diouf. My memory of him at World Cup was he was great. Pretty certain Houllier signed him pre world cup, relatively cheaply, as his value / stature was markedly higher after the world cup. Again, if my feeble memory is correct, he was very impressive in his first few games, possibly scored a few times as well. He then seemed to fall by the wayside.
Even though his decline had started, Pele had him in his Top 100 in the world , of which 50 were retired players:
Maradona, Di Steffano, Pele himself, Banks,Bobby Charlton,Platini, Beckanbauer,Muller,Seeler,Puskas,Facchetti, Zoff,Cryuff,Neeskens, Best, Eusebio and King Kenny.
The 50 current players included:
Kempes,Saviola,Cafu,Ronaldhino,Ronaldo,Zico, Socrates,Nedved,Schmeichel,Beckham,Keegan,Shearer,Linnekar,Owen,Cantona,Viera,Henry,Zidane,Ballack,Rummenigge, Klinsmann,Buffon,Del Piero,Totti,Vierri,Roy Keane,Bergkamp,Kluivert,Van Nistelroy,Figo,Raul,Shevchenko, Diouf and Juan Sebastian Veron.
Interesting (to me anyway) that Veron was brilliant for Argentina and the Italian club he played for,but crap for Manure ( although like Diof, scored a couple of goals for them very early in his career with them), and became average/crap by his standards and when he moved to Chelski ( I think the c**t scored a goal against us in his debut?)didn't take long for him to fall out of favour. Wonder if like Veron,Diouf wasn't suited to Prem and his World Cup performance was "a flash in the pan"?
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