Liverpool FC legend Steven Gerrard has emphatically stated that signing Senegal hero El Hadji Diouf was a recruitment mistake.

According to the 2005 UEFA Champions League winner, Liverpool had the chance to sign former Real Madrid and Arsenal forward Nicolas Anelka on a permanent deal after a loan stint.

The club, however, chose to sign Diouf following his heroics for Senegal at the 2002 Japan-Korea FIFA World Cup, where the African country reached the quarter-finals.

“We got recruitment badly wrong at times,” Gerrard said. “Badly wrong at times.”

“I’ll give you one example. We had the chance to sign Nicolas Anelka or El Hadji Diouf. And we bought El Hadji Diouf on the back of a four- to five-game period in a World Cup when we could have bought someone on the back of five to six years. That was the decision.”

“I don’t know who made the final decision. That is one example of us as a club getting it wrong because that is one of the biggest mismatches you could debate. El Hadji Diouf or Nicolas Anelka.”

Gerrard and Diouf played together for Liverpool from 2002 to 2004 before the Senegalese left for Bolton, and it is abundantly clear they simply did not like each other.

Diouf had accused his former captain of being jealous, selfish and even a racist – which Gerrard vigorously denied after he announced his retirement.