By now, it really isn’t a secret, but El-Hadji Diouf isn’t the biggest fan of Steven Gerrard and vice-versa.
The two may have played together at Liverpool, and yet there was never any affinity between the pair, which the former Senegalese forward has made very clear in the media ever since.
You can often find him giving an interview somewhere about his time at Anfield, which he never really enjoyed, or seemingly took seriously.
Another member of that team at the time was Florent Sinama-Pongolle, back when Gérard Houllier was manager, and in an interview with journalist Walid Acherchour, the striker described a moment where tensions overflowed.
He said: “Half-time of a preseason game. Fight between Diouf and Gerrard. I was traumatised. Can you imagine the young ones seeing this and thinking that’s what professionals are like at that level? At half-time, in the dressing room. Stevie G is all like ‘you have to pass, you have to pass’ and [Diouf] just loses it.
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“He didn’t speak English. His English was rubbish. You know what he did? They hated each other so much. Steven Gerrard arrives, he insults Diouf. ‘Hey, you f******…’. And [Diouf] couldn’t answer, so he grabs Gérard Houllier and says: ‘Tell him, I’ll f*** his mum’. He came in and said: ‘I’m not his mate, I’ll do him in straight away’.”
The rest is Sinama-Pongolle laughing at the situation and the ridiculousness of it all, but it’s clear there was no love lost between the two former Reds.
Diouf only stayed three years at Liverpool between 2002 and 2005, spending the 2004-05 season on loan at Bolton, whom he joined permanently at the end of the campaign.
The rest is well known, with spells at Sunderland, Blackburn, Rangers, Leeds and even Doncaster.
