In the past twenty years, football has become an even more global game by bringing the world to our doorstep. Once upon a time the greatest players on the planet only ever played against each other in major international tournaments, now we can see them every other week in the Champions League. The pool from which teams could draw upon to find people is deeper now than it has ever been due to vast expansions in worldwide scouting. Up until the 1980s, Liverpool only ever flirted with talent that wasn't from these shores. Hugh Lester was a twenty something American when he became the first overseas player to play for Liverpool in 1912, his career spanned only two games. Throughout the century, a handful of South African exports plied their trade at Anfield, most notably one Gordon Hodgson who went on to score over two hundred goals (241) for Liverpool, placing him in the all time goalscoring charts above the likes of Kenny Dalglish and Robbie Fowler. It wasn't until the arrival of 1980s that Liverpool began to cast an eye upon the wider world, having all but conquered things domestically. Avi Cohen (signed late 1979), Craig Johnston, Bruce Grobbelar, Glenn Hysen and Jan Mølby became household names up and down the country, let alone on Merseyside. Liverpool had opened it's door to the world, a door that would never be closed again.
A decade later and the foreign revolution was in full swing, what with money being readily available and often they being a cheaper alternative to their English counterpart. Unfortunately that led to some more than questionable signings. Stig Inge Bjørnebye fared better than Istvan Kozma and Torben Piechnik, mostly because even Charlie Adam looked like a decent bit of business compared to those two. The less said about Sean Dundee, the better. Fast forward to the mid nineties and we are now looking to the wider world as a way of keeping up with Manchester United, as opposed to setting the pace ourselves. Gérard Houllier, Liverpool's first ever foreign born manager was the man to be set that task. With him came Sami Hyypiä, Dietmar Hamann and Jerzy Dudek, players who would go on to join the likes of Grobbelar and Mølby. The Anfield trophy cabinet was getting stocked again on a regular basis. By the arrival of the 2002-03 season, Liverpool - on the back of finishing as runner up the season prior - were in buoyant mood of finally ending their wait for a nineteenth league title. That's where El-Hadji Diouf and Salif Diao come in.
Karel Poborský will forever been known in his homeland for lobbing the ball over Vítor Baía in their quarter final match of Euro 96. He wowed onlookers to the point where clubs all over Europe were vying for his signature, Liverpool included. Manchester United were the team that managed to get his signature and he arrived at Old Trafford amidst a wave of hype and expectation. Hype he could never live up to and expectations he had no chance of matching. Two years and a mere thirty three appearances later Poborský and Manchester United moved on, both trying to forget it ever happened. This is most often cited as an example of why teams should not buy players on the basis of having had a good international tournament. Karel has - somewhat unfortunately - become the poster child for the caution one must heed with those who appear to be a lot better than their record would suggest, it happened before then (Piechnik's performances in the 92 European Championships will have done a lot to persuade Souness to go and get him) and since. But for all that was wrong with Diouf and Diao, one of them was signed before the World Cup had started and the other played all of one game before Liverpool acquired his signature.
A lot has been written about Salif Diao, most of it includes any number of profanities. “With Salif, I knew after a week of training that he wasn’t going to be good enough,” said Steven Gerrard in his autobiography, a frighteningly accurate statement from the Liverpool captain who no doubt will have been as frustrated as anyone with the club so close to where it wanted to be. Players who are lacking in ability are fairly blameless. It is not they who asked to be put forth in the spotlight in such a way, for even those who have the talent to thrive in such an atmosphere wilt under the pressure. What really separates a flop from someone who isn't fit to wear the shirt is attitude. Liverpool requires it's players to carry themselves in a certain way, perhaps more so than many others. Which is why the image of him trying to get his hands on the European Cup when he had spent the last few months on loan at Birmingham City stands out the more than any of his failures on the pitch.
Even more baffling than some of the mind boggling performances Diao put forth on the pitch will have been the reasons behind his transfer in the first place. He agreed terms to come to Anfield on May 27th 2002, four days before Senegal opened the World Cup with a shock victory over the holders France so it wasn't as if the scouts at Liverpool had been collectively bamboozled by a one off performance. A few days later in Daegu saw the best and worst of Salif Diao. Scoring arguably the goal of the tournament and then being sent off in the final ten minutes. At the very least Houllier would have saved himself a few million, as this would no doubt have added to his transfer fee, had he indeed signed the midfielder post World Cup as is erroneously believed to be the case. That he has still managed to carve himself out a career in the Premier League suggests that there was always some talent there but that tactics needed to suit in order to coax it out. In that sense Stoke and Diao are a match made in heaven and to a lesser degree could have worked at Liverpool. But not at the expense of Steven Gerrard, Didi Hamann, Gary McAllister, Danny Murphy, Nick Barmby or Patrik Berger. Liverpool had an abundance of central midfielders at the time, signing another one would be a glaring case of ignoring what problems did exist in terms of chance creation. After his illness, Gérard Houllier went to his default setting of buying from Ligue 1 and got found wanting. Unfortunately he would not be finished.
Going through the list of players that have worn the Liverbird upon their chest over the years, it's hard to find anybody worse than El Hadji Diouf. There have been players that came and went who had nowhere near his ability but his conduct was so far below what you'd expect from anyone in terms of representing the club, let alone a paid employee. After lighting up the world stage with his performance against France on May 31st, the BBC announced his signing for the reds
the following day. It's possible that Houllier could have been watching his countrymen fall at the hands of this nation of seemingly untapped potential, while simultaneously patting himself on the back for signing Salif Diao prior to the tournament when it occurred to him to sign Diouf aswell. With that, Gerard instantly reached for the chequebook and somehow managed to get all the necessary paperwork completed within a few hours. A far more likely scenario is that everything had been sorted prior to the tournament and after the opening game Liverpool wanted to prevent anyone from coming in at the last minute and complicating matters. Whereas Diao was lacking the talent to be a success at Liverpool, Diouf had all that and more. More came in the form of an attitude that made Didier Drogba and John Terry look wholesome.
Trying to make sense of the Diouf transfer is a little like trying to barter with Freddy Krueger, except that Diouf has given me more nightmares. Choosing him ahead of Nicolas Anelka appeared baffling at the time but this was the tipping point in terms of Houllier's decision making with regard to signings. He'd not really got one wrong up until then, unfortunately this one backfired spectacularly. Having said that, if you discount the goals scored by Anelka in the last ten games of the season, Liverpool still managed to hit the back of the net nineteen times. Houllier could have been forgiven for thinking that we needed more of an unknown quantity in terms of opening up defences or someone to cut inside and cause a threat. Signed as a goalscorer - if that was indeed the case - Diouf was a bust from the get go. He was hardly prolific, having only managed nineteen goals in ninety eight games during his time in France. There's also the fact that Gérard Houllier was a massive disciplinarian and taking a chance on such an impetuous footballer smacks of either desperation or a gross overestimation on his part to either coach the goals into him or the demons out of him. He may also not have liked the idea of breaking up the Heskey/Owen partnership with there being very little chance of Anelka being happy on the bench. Fitting him into the side wasn't the issue, it's what he'd do off the pitch - and sometimes even on it - that made Diouf one of the worst pieces of business Liverpool have ever done.
This time next week the Euros will be over and the teams will begin their annual shopping sprees, highlighted by those names and faces that are on now at the forefront of our minds that would a few weeks ago was nothing more than a spectre. Dzagoev, Mandžukić and Pilař have seen their respective reputations enhanced to a level that they would have only dreamt of prior to the tournament. Do the lessons learnt from Diouf and Diao mean that these players should be avoided at all costs because they now represented an inflated sense of worth? Yes and no. Because of how much money is involved in the game these days, success and those players that will bring it mean that scouring all over the globe has become a necessity. In terms of finding the right player, there is no stone to be left unturned and as such if a team wanted to buy Alan Dzagoev for example then this tournament would only confirm what they already know about the player, not that nobody had ever heard of him before Euro 2012. The idea also that any club would be willing to pay over the odds for a player based on the strength of a handful of games is naive bordering on lunacy. Many teams in the Euros play little over three or four games, to underline how small a sample size that is, three games into the Premier League season, Wolves were sat third.
Buying players - whether they've had a good tournament or not - is a risk. A team like Manchester City - or Manchester United during the nineties - can ignore almost any advice and take a chance with a Poborský like signing, if only to prevent him from being successful in a rival team. Real Madrid it could be argued have done this with Özil and Khadira after the World Cup in South Africa with the gamble seeming to have paid off. For everyone else it's about knowing as much about the player as possible and even then hoping for the best. At the top level of European football, it's unlikely there are ever any genuine unknown talents to break through in any tournament and that those that were previously low profile players will have done nothing more than add a couple of zeros to their value.In this age of information and the influence of the internet over all aspects of society - let alone football - mean that even the most casual of fan can become somewhat knowledgeable on all aspects of the game. One of the reasons it's harder for these players to come into a team is because they lose part of what made them successful in the first place, that element of surprise. Expectation weighs heavily upon certain people and that somebody can instantly go from being a high profile player in an international side built around them is too big a leap for many people to hurdle. Despite the lack of empathy toward the England national team, a lot of players around the world are still as motivated as to play for their country, something which might be lacking - or at least not on the same level - when it comes to having garnered your big money transfer following on from that.
From the outset, it does not appear as if Brendan Rodgers will be using the European Championships as an excuse to spend some money. The players we are being linked with (Sigurðsson, Rodriguez, Borini, Tello and Adam Johnson) are all either players he has worked with in the past or talented prospects that are unable to force their way into the superstar teams they play for and as such may be more affordable. No doubt that certain stars of this tournament will find themselves in new cities and with new challenges in the coming season. Whether they work out or not is not down to the fact that they're playing well now. The so called "Poborský Effect" may have carried some weight sixteen years ago but with the changing face of football the way it is, only the rich can even afford to take that chance. Gérard Houllier made a massive mistake in signing Diouf and Diao but they were not caused by what Senegal achieved on the world stage. They are mistakes Liverpool cannot afford to make again.
