Player Profile

Diouf had a tough upbringing on the streets of Senegal before he emigrated to France and played solitary seasons for Sochaux and Rennes from 1998-2000. After 18 goals in 54 league games in two seasons for Lens and coming close to winning the title in his second season he accepted Liverpool's offer prior to the 2002 World Cup. Liverpool had finished second in the League and Houllier saw Diouf as the player who could get them the elusive Premiership title rather than Nicolas Anelka who had been on loan at Liverpool for five months. Diouf was the key player in Senegal's team that reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup in South Korea and Japan and was voted the Best African player in 2002. His Anfield career seemed quite promising as he scored two goals on his Anfield debut against Southampton on 24 August 2002 but the next goal didn't come until November. More accustomed to the bench than to being in the first eleven, he got a regular run in the second half of the 2002/03 season, but on the right wing instead of as an out-and-out striker.

Prior to a fifth-round showdown against Celtic in the UEFA Cup, Phil Thompson was very complimentary about Diouf: "El Hadji is a lovely lad and can play an important part in the rest of the season.'' What happened in the aforementioned match was not the act of a pristine boy. Diouf disgraced the red shirt of Liverpool by spitting on a Celtic fan after full-time at Celtic Park. UEFA gave Diouf a two-match ban and he was fined two weeks' wages by the club. Diouf apologised but then added later in Senegalese papers he would have beaten up the fan who struck him on the head if he had done the same outside a football ground. Diouf was a regular in the first half of the 2003/04 season that cost Houllier his job and the Senegalese didn't get on the scoresheet at all that season. Diouf joined Bolton on loan in 2004/05 and quickly scored nine League goals for them which led to a permanent deal in the summer of 2005.

Sam Allardyce could hardly believe his luck: "El Hadji has all the skill in the world to become one of our most significant signings in the modern era of this great club," the Bolton boss said. Diouf spent four relatively successful seasons at the Reebok scoring 23 goals in 136 games before joining Sunderland in the summer of 2008. Diouf scored no goals in 16 games for Roy Keane's men before rejoining Allardyce at Blackburn in mid-season for £2 million where he scored a solitary goal in 15 appearances in his debut season. Without a single goal in 2010/11 in 21 matches for Rovers Diouf moved to Rangers on loan in January 2011 which didn't exactly increase his popularity with the Celtic fans. Apart from playing in 15 league matches, he was also a member of the team that won the Scottish league cup in March. Two months later Rangers clinched their third successive Scottish Premier League title.

Diouf's contract with Blackburn was ended 'by mutual consent' in the summer of 2011 by new manager Steve Kean. In October 2011 Diouf was offered a trial at West Ham United, by his old friend, Allardyce. Ultimately, though, the Hammers decided not to offer him a contract, considering his lack of fitness and a bad reputation. His colourful past did not prevent Doncaster Rovers from offering him a lifeline and he made 23 appearances and scored six times, but Rovers were relegated to League One. Diouf's career took another strange turn in August 2012 when he accepted a non-contract deal with Neil Warnock's Leeds. The move was very interesting, to say the least, because Warnock and Diouf abused each other in the media in January 2011 after Diouf, who was then at Blackburn, abused QPR's James Mackie as he lay on the ground with a broken leg. "I was going to call him a sewer rat but that might be insulting to sewer rats," Warnock said and added: "I think he is the lowest of the low. I hope he goes abroad because I won't miss watching him. He is a nasty little person." Diouf responded: "I can't stand him. He is not a good manager. Nobody has heard of him outside of this country so who cares what he thinks about me." Perhaps surprisingly, the player lasted longer at Elland Road than the manager. Warnock left Leeds on 1 April 2013 but Diouf appeared in 45 matches in 2012/13, scoring seven times. Although still under contract to Leeds United in 2013/14, Diouf did not make a single first-team appearance and was released by the club on 16 May 2014, leaving him a free agent at the age of thirty-three. He then moved to Malaysia where he joined Sabah FC for one season. In February 2016 Diouf launched an extraordinary attack on Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher, referring to the latter a sh*t. By then he had retired from playing and was working as an adviser to the president of Senegal. He is also a goodwill ambassador for the country and operates a gymnasium in the capital, Dakar.