Football is a globally loved game; millions of children have played it since early childhood. Making it to the top is a preserve of the most talented, persistent, and hardworking footballers who prove they can compete with the world’s elite.
A few have taken a completely different path to the top, earning the status of legendary cheaters who managed to play at the highest level despite their clear lack of skills. Hollywood screenwriters could only dream of writing stories as intriguing as those of Ali Dia and Carlos Kaiser!
Ali Dia: Worst English Premier League Player in History and The Meme That Keeps On Giving
Ali Dia was nothing close to the best that the twentieth century had to offer. In a world filled with players of Maldini, Zidane, and Brazilian Ronaldo caliber, Ali Dia had no chance of playing at the top.
However, for close to a decade, the elusive Ali Dia managed to lace his boots in France, Finland, and Germany through short-term contracts with lower-division clubs. After a few disastrous games for his clubs, the Senegalese national would disappear, but not without leaving an unpaid bill for a hotel room or bar.
Like Icarus, Ali Dia’s wings melted when he flew close to the sun. In 1996, he made his English Premier League debut, lining up for Southampton. With a month’s contract for the club, Dia came on in the 32nd minute for club legend Matthew Le Tissier against Leeds. He would be subbed after a disastrous showing.
Ali Dia, George Weah’s Cousin (Or So They Thought)
A great magician does not reveal his tricks, but in this case, Ali Dia’s journey to Southampton requires an exception to the rule. Using the name of Africa’s only Ballon d’Or winner, Ali Dia orchestrated a phone call to Southampton manager Graeme Souness and claimed it was George Weah on the other side of the call.
With the technology at the time, there were no tools for scouting, and people were more trusting. So, the George Weah recommendation was enough to earn Ali Dia a one-month contract. Looking at his playing history, Ali Dia possibly played this trick more than once in his career using different African players’ names.
Of course, the man himself refuses to acknowledge the hoaxes, writing off disastrous stories as unfortunate failures. While not much is available on him after his Icarus moment at Southampton, Ali Dia went on to play non-league football for Gateshead and then disappeared, only remaining in the memories of many and forever the subject of many memes in football internet communities.
Carlos Kaiser: A Professional Footballer With a Rich Resume But No Single Match in His Career.
Ali Dia did not just fake it to make it to be a professional footballer: he took it a notch higher and tried it out on the pitch. Carlos Enrique Raposo, alias “Kaiser,” played it safe by avoiding the pitch altogether.
With 13 years as a professional footballer, Carlos Kaiser is a legendary football con artist who attracted interest from prominent Latin American clubs without a single minute of play. Unlike Ali Dia, who played coy about his machinations, Kaiser embraced it and even consulted on a documentary about his life.
In the documentary, he talks about managing to get signed by clubs such as Botafogo, Flamengo, Bangu, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama, América, Puebla, El Paso, and Ajaccio, and the things he did to avoid playing matches.
In the era before the internet, clubs could not communicate directly, leaving the role of marketing the player to Kaiser himself. He conveniently left out information on his playing time at previous clubs and bribed journalists to write glowingly about him.
Carlos was not a complete fraud: He’d been through the Flamengo youth academy, which appealed to the clubs that signed him. He also developed friendships with well-known players like Carlos Alberto Torres, Zico, Bebeto, Romario, and Ricardo Rocha. Particularly, he leveraged his friendship with Renato Gaucho to get recommendations each time he moved clubs.
He used his status to attract women and spend time at nightclubs to the point where he was physically unable to train. However, he received goodwill from his teammates by involving them in his escapades. He was at the heart of the dressing rooms he was present in through jokes and words to boost team spirit.
From club to club, he faked injuries, bribed youth players to injure him and bribed doctors to fake diagnoses. At every club, he would “lose his grandmother” and then return from the funeral depressed and unable to play.
At Bangu club, he avoided playing during the warm-up by getting into a bust-up with fans and being sent off before the match started.
The justification for Carlos was simple: in his youth, clubs often deceived players with contracts, so he decided to become a kind of Robinhood player, returning the favor. While he didn’t rise to the high levels that Ali Dia did, he still managed to carve out his name in football history.
