A decade from now, two decades even, when football fans are reminiscing and looking back on the Premier League as we knew it around the turn of the millennium, you can count on the same names being brought up.
Steven Gerrard will be remembered as one of the finest midfielders of his generation, an inspirational captain capable of 'Roy Of The Rovers' moments and someone who stayed loyal to his club until the end of his career. While he will likely never escape the mockery from rival fans for that slip, nobody who isn't on the wind-up could deny how important he was to the Premier League while he was in it.
El Hadji Diouf, on the other hand, will be remembered for diving, spitting, and being a player that is fondly remembered by precisely zero of the clubs he played for. He must be the only Premier League player to actually have a spitting compilation on YouTube.
His now annual public dig at Steven Gerrard is something that enraged Liverpool fans at first, as it was far more serious. The Senegalese made alarmingly casual claims that Gerrard was a racist, before attacking his legitimacy as a footballer.
I carried the national team for many years, 14 million fans on my shoulders. When we won, it was thanks to me, when we lost, it was my fault. What I represented for Senegal, he never managed 100th of that for England. He has never done anything in the World Cup or the Euros.
When I arrived at Liverpool, seeing as I just did what I wanted, he thought that I did not respect the club. But he downright killed his team by slipping against Chelsea. If Liverpool has never won the Premier League, it's no accident. What goes around, comes around.
Gerrard was defended publicly by former teammates such as Jamie Carragher, and John Arne Riise, but Diouf never seemed to move on.
In fact, he still hasn't as his now seemingly annual public attack on Gerrard has arrived for 2017.
However, this time, rather than claim that one of the better players in the history of the Premier League was crap, he has admitted that Steven Gerrard was 'very good', which if nothing else, is a remarkable show of maturity and personal growth from Diouf.
I have no problem with him. He [Gerrard] is a strong character and I am a strong character.
'Stevie G' was a very good player. People like him in Liverpool but he never did anything for his country. I am Mr El Hadji Diouf, Mr Senegal but he is Mr Liverpool and Senegal is bigger than Liverpool and he has to know that.
Unfortunately for El Hadji, it's a case of one step forward, two steps back, as if acknowledging that Gerrard was indeed a good player was a sign of maturity, then literally bragging that more people like him because Senegal is bigger than Liverpool is laughably juvenile.
But, for someone of Diouf's expert shithousery, we have to see this as progress. Perhaps one day he will realise that an exciting contribution at the 2002 World Cup does not give him the divine right to talk down about footballers who actually enjoyed successful careers.
Baby steps.
Or not, he's clearly a gobshite.
