Name: Laurent Mayaba D’Jaffo
DOB: 5/11/70
POB: Bazas,
France
Position: Striker
Clubs: Montpellier, Chamois
Niortais, Red Star Paris, Ayr United, Bury, Stockport County,
Sheffield United, Aberdeen, Mansfield.
International Caps: 3 (Benin)
D’Jaffo’s legacy is one of those curious careers where few
of his former “supporters” have anything positive to say about his brief
existence with their club and yet he managed to continuously find new
employers.
His pedigree was respectable enough; coming through the
ranks to make over 30 appearances as a young player with Ligue 1 side Montpellier. The club of
Laurent Blanc and Eric Cantona took their time but finally decided our hero was
not progressing into a French top-flight footballer and moved him onto second
division also-rans Chamois Niortais, where he spent one season before moving
again to Red Star Paris.
Well established on the road to football’s abyss he needed a
radical change to force some momentum back into the fast fading career. So,
with the Bosman ruling having come into effect two summers before, D’Jaffo
signed for Gordon Dalziel’s Ayr United, fresh from promotion back to the
Scottish First Division.
Technique and agility were the attributes he counted on, and
while he could perform a role he struggled for the full backing of those on the
terracing. Fans can get restless with any striker who doesn’t score a lot of
goals. For most players it’s a predatory instinct that their born with and
cannot be taught, but for others goalscoring can become habit that occurs only
after switching to a level that allows that talent to blossom – Michael Higdon
and Jon Daly are two examples of SPL players that have only become reliable
scorers late in their careers.
When you are unable to score goals anywhere else, Scotland’s
second-tier can certainly help you out. D’Jaffo’s 10 goals in 25 games was the
best ratio he would manage for his entire career, including this absolute
beauty in a game against Morton. Even still – as the YouTube description reads
– he still had a reputation for being a somewhat lazy player, and one in every
two and a half games hardly makes you Pippo Inzaghi. Still he was certainly a
rare talent even if he was probably too aware of the fact that he was a big fish
in a small pond. Instead of building on the progress he’d made in one season he
decided to jump ship again: joining Bury for the beginning of the 1998/99
season.
The high hopes Bury fans had for their new striker never
materialised. Recollection of his time there is not helped by the fact that the
club were relegated from the English First Division – on goals scored.
Rent-a-miss moved once again, finding some form and brief popularity by
performing well and netting seven goals in 21 games for Stockport.
This fleeting sparkle proved enough to warrant the attention of Sheffield
United manager Neil Warnock, who snapped up the striker in the year 2000.
Now, as much as you may want to repeatedly punch him in the
face, Neil Warnock is a well respected manager in the English football league.
If he saw something in D’Jaffo then there must be a good player there, deep
down… deep, deep down. However, we must remind all of you that this is the
same man who signed Christian Nade. Case closed.
D’Jaffo did have a habit of netting vital goals, including
one against arch-rivals Sheffield Wednesday,
but he was somewhat of a comedy figure at Bramall Lane with his laboured running
style and frequent inability to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. All in all he
outstayed his welcome after featuring 70 times over two years and was on the
move again at the end of the 2002 season.
Ebbe Skovdahl was the man responsible for bringing the
player back into the hearts of minds of Scottish football supporters, signing
him for Aberdeen.
The now 32-year old D’Jaffo ponced about the park for 18 games, scarcely made
an impact and refused to leave the club early in search of first team football,
content to sit on his backside and see out the rest of his contract. He is
often brought up in conversations of Aberdeen’s
worst ever football team. When you consider what they’ve been doing over the
last 15 years that’s some pretty stiff competition.
After a brief spell at Mansfield
he decidedly, mercifully, to retire.
Where is he now? D’Jaffo has been a football agent for the
past seven years, enjoying a close working relationship with former club
Sheffield United and representing Didier Agathe when the winger was still a
Celtic player.
Show: Highland Pyramids
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