Bernard Diomède arrived at Anfield in the summer of 2000 as a world champion. He left three years later having played just five games, and the moment most Liverpool fans remember is a goal that never was.
On his Premier League debut against Sunderland he hooked an overhead kick over the line, or so the television replays said. The officials didn’t see it that way. But there is a lot more to the French winger than one cruel afternoon at Anfield.
Made in Auxerre
Diomède was a product of Auxerre’s famous academy. He made his top-flight debut on 12 December 1992 in a 2-1 win at Nîmes, and that same season he helped Auxerre win the Coupe Gambardella, France’s big youth cup.
Under the legendary Guy Roux he became a fixture on the left wing, quick, direct and blessed with a sweet left foot. In 1996 Auxerre won a historic French league and cup double, and Diomède was a big part of it.
In eight years with the first team he scored 30 league goals, and on 28 January 1998 he won his first France cap, against Spain.
A summer to remember
That summer France hosted the World Cup, and Aimé Jacquet put Diomède in his squad of 22.
He started three games: the group wins over Saudi Arabia and Denmark, and the nervy last-16 tie with Paraguay in Lens, settled by Laurent Blanc’s golden goal. He did not feature again, but on 12 July 1998 he was a world champion when Zinedine Zidane and Emmanuel Petit saw off Brazil 3-0 at the Stade de France.
Paraguay turned out to be his last game for his country. He finished with eight caps.
Houllier comes calling
After the World Cup, Diomède wanted to move on, but Guy Roux would not let him go. He stayed at Auxerre for two more years, and by 2000 he had fallen out of favour there.
Gérard Houllier knew Diomède from his time as France’s technical director, a role he held until 1998. On 7 June 2000 Liverpool paid £3m for him, on a three-year contract.
“I am very happy to join a club with a French coach who I respect and know well,” he said. He was part of a busy summer at Anfield, alongside Markus Babbel, Gary McAllister, Nick Barmby and Pegguy Arphexad.
The goal that wasn’t
His debut came on 14 September 2000 in Bucharest, where Barmby scored his first Liverpool goal in a 1-0 UEFA Cup win over Rapid.
Nine days later, on 23 September, Diomède and Christian Ziege made their Premier League debuts against Sunderland at Anfield. Kevin Phillips gave Sunderland the lead after 14 minutes, and on 34 minutes Michael Owen headed in a Ziege free-kick to equalise.
The Frenchman was one of Liverpool’s liveliest players that afternoon, and just before half-time came his moment. He launched himself into a spectacular overhead kick, Thomas Sørensen somehow scrambled the ball away with a double save, and the game finished 1-1.
The replays showed the ball had crossed the line. But this was long before goal-line technology, and the officials couldn’t be sure it had gone in.
Injury and a crowded squad
Five days later he played in the goalless second leg against Rapid at Anfield. Then a knee injury kept him out for two months, and by the time he returned in December, Houllier’s side were gathering momentum.
That season Liverpool won the League Cup, the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup. Diomède made just one more appearance that season, as a substitute in a 1-1 draw at Manchester City on 31 January 2001.
His last game came on 21 August 2001, in the second leg of a Champions League qualifier against the Finnish side Haka at Anfield, with Liverpool already 5-0 up from the first leg. He did his bit, too, cutting the ball back for Jamie Redknapp to smash in Liverpool’s second goal in a 4-1 win.
He never played for the first team again.
The Ajaccio hat-trick
In January 2003 Diomède joined Ajaccio on loan, insisting he had “no regrets” about his move to Anfield. When his Liverpool contract ran out that summer, the Corsican club signed him.
On 23 May 2004, the final day of the season, Ajaccio needed to beat Metz to stay in Ligue 1, and Toifilou Maoulida put the visitors ahead. Diomède then scored a hat-trick: a penalty, a second just before half-time and a free-kick after the break. Ajaccio won 3-1 and stayed up.
Spells at Créteil in 2004-05 and Clermont in 2005-06 followed, and in January 2008, after 18 months without a club, he announced his retirement.
A cockerel called Diomède
There is one more story that has to be told. When France’s rugby players went to the 2003 World Cup in Australia, a local farmer lent them a live cockerel to be their mascot.
Their team manager, Jo Maso, had held up Diomède as the perfect example of a squad player who keeps a positive attitude even when he isn’t playing, so the players named the bird after him. The footballer, by all accounts, was not especially amused.
Shaping the next generation
These days Diomède’s work is all about young players. In 2008 he opened his own football academy at the La Salle Saint-Nicolas school in Issy-les-Moulineaux, just outside Paris, where youngsters combine football with their schooling.
In August 2015 he took charge of France’s under-17s, and he has coached the country’s youth teams ever since. He led the under-19s to the final of the 2024 European Championship, where they lost 2-0 to Spain, and last year he took the under-20s to the semi-finals of the World Cup in Chile, where they went out to Morocco on penalties and finished fourth. He is still in charge of the under-20s.
Once a Red
Bernard Diomède’s Liverpool career amounted to five games and a goal that should have stood. He arrived at a club full of internationals, lost two months to injury at just the wrong moment and never got a proper run in the side.
But he is one of a select group of World Cup winners to have pulled on a Liverpool shirt, and for one afternoon against Sunderland the Kop saw just what he could do. More than 25 years on, he is still passing on what he learned to the next generation of French footballers. That is a fine way to be remembered, and proof that a footballer’s story is about far more than the games he played.
