Glasgow, 07.11.2018, Ibrox Stadion, Fussball, Scottish Premiership, Glasgow Rangers Imago Images
Yan Diomande, the RB Leipzig winger now linked with a blockbuster move to Liverpool, once spent a quiet week training with Rangers’ B team at Ibrox.
The Ivorian teenager, tipped to succeed Mohamed Salah at Anfield, arrived at the Glasgow club in October 2023 as an unknown 16-year-old trialist from America.
Diomande had been playing semi-professional football at the DME Academy in Daytona Beach, Florida, before jetting into Scotland for an unheralded trial stint.
He featured in a bounce game against Monaco’s reserves at Ibrox, helping give former Rangers youngster Robbie Fraser a ringside seat for one of football’s most remarkable stories.
Fraser, now part of Neil Lennon’s Dunfermline backline, admitted the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood perfectly captured his reaction when he later saw Diomande starring for Leipzig.
“You kind of forget about these lads who come in on trial,” said Fraser, recalling the moment he recognised the Bundesliga sensation he had once shared a dressing room with.
“It was only a while later that we saw him show up in Germany with Leipzig. I remember seeing these clips online of him scoring all these incredible goals.”
Fraser was unambiguous about the quality Diomande showed during that brief week in Glasgow, insisting his talent was evident from the very first training session.
“But once we got out on to the training pitch, his feet did all the talking! You could tell he had a lot of ability straight away,” Fraser said.
“He was great off either foot. He was direct, he was quick, he was strong. He rarely lost the ball even though he was a dribbler. But that was the last we saw of him.”
Fraser described Diomande as shy in the changing room, noting the teenager said little, partly because he did not appear to speak much English at the time.
Once on the pitch against Monaco, however, the young Ivorian produced a performance that stayed with those who witnessed it long after he had disappeared from their radar.
Diomande went on to have trial spells at Chelsea and Bournemouth before signing for Spanish club Leganes, eventually earning a £17 million move to RB Leipzig in Germany.
Now valued at around £100 million, he sits at the very top of Liverpool’s summer wishlist as the club searches for a long-term replacement for the outgoing Salah.
Fraser admitted he was genuinely surprised Rangers did not push harder to secure a deal after what he had seen during that single week at the club’s B team setup.
“I’ll be honest, I was a bit shocked we didn’t get him signed given how good he was but just assumed he had trials elsewhere,” the defender said.
Some Rangers supporters have pointed to the failure as another recruitment misstep, though Diomande himself has offered a more measured explanation for what happened.
“It’s not true that I didn’t want to sign for them — my agent at the time demanded too much money,” the winger has previously stated, clearing the club of any lack of interest.
Fraser suggested the upheaval surrounding Michael Beale’s sacking and Steven Davis’s brief caretaker spell may have allowed the opportunity to slip through the cracks at Ibrox.
“Maybe it got pushed to one side and didn’t get acted on because of the circumstances at the time,” he said, pointing to the wider turmoil engulfing the club during that period.
Despite the circumstances, Fraser has no doubt about the magnitude of what Rangers missed and where Diomande is ultimately headed in the game.
“He’ll be remembered as the one who got away,” Fraser said, adding that Diomande is “a freak of nature” destined to be a genuine superstar at the highest level.
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