Scottish football has long been in the grip of what we could call Prestwick Airport syndrome.
Elvis Presley got back there about 90 minutes in March 1960, but the airport did not stop establishing different plaques and spending a theme restaurant on the King of Rock and Roll.
Similarly, our football clubs are always happy to be determined on a possible connection with quantity, no matter how weak. See Diego Maradona Junior's failed trial spell in Dunfermline in 2004, or Rodney Sneijder – younger brother of Wesley – plays one solitary game for Dundee United in 2015.
With the advantage of retrospect, however, there is one mention in this specific chapter of the Scottish transfer of oddities that jump more of the page than any other.
Ten years ago, Partick Thistle dived this month for Mathias Pogba, brother of the World Cup winner and one -time most expensive player in the world Paul.
Today, Mathias is best known for his involvement in a bizarre attempt to extort money from his younger and more successful brother or sister. In December he was sentenced together with five others and sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended (although it was allowed to serve the rest at home arrest).
When he arrived in Firhill at the age of 24, he was a Guinese international striker who had played series B football with Pescara and proved himself competent and moderately productive at the English lower League level with both Wrexham and Crewe Alexandra.
Although the Jags undoubtedly thought that there could be some benefits of his signature publicity with Paul Fresh of participation in the Champions League final for Juventus in 2015 and named the best young player at the World Cup Was also a logic that was Alan Archibald's manager for the older Pogba.
At the time, Thistle was in a five -year -old Stint in the Premiership for two years, striving to put down roots and yet constantly undermined due to a chronic lack of goals.
Jags fan and Podcaster David Forrest remembers: 'The club felt like the most professional it had been in years, and we had a permanent core of players who could have been familiar with, so there was a genuine feeling that we could consolidate our position in premiership and become a club like Kilmarnock or St Johnstone.
'This was also the same time as the deal of Kingsford Capital Management, so in the space of a few weeks a Californian investor had deposited six digits in the club, after which our mascot Jaggy Macbee was replaced by a sun godity [Kingsley] Straight from an HP Lovecraft story, and now we signed the brother of Paul Pogba!
“It was a whirlwind time, but it was exciting. You would go to work and people who usually never gave us the time of the day asked you about the latest crazy thistle development. '
Given the chance, Mathias may have just wanted to talk about the natural splendor of Ruchill Park, or how excited he was to work with Stuart 'Banzo' Bannigan. But from the start it was clear that his famous brother would dominate most of his conversations with the media.
“Everyone talked about my brother,” Sighed Thistle's new no. 99 in one of his first interviews. “But it would be nice to say that Mathias is Pogba here.”
Forrest adds: 'For many Distelfans, the first thing to come to me was Jorge Cadete. He had signed with us in the early 2000s, directly from the Portuguese Big Brother, and we got a lot of press release about it. Not only did he never score for us, Distel did not score once when Cadete was on the field. It was a total disaster.
“That said, Pogba was a Guinese international, and we had strikes with many more dubious goal records. We were so dependent on Kris Doolan at the front when we shouted for someone to pick up the play. We all knew that we could not trust Doolan forever, and if Pogba was a quarter of what his brother was, it would work for us … “
To put you out of your tension, it didn't. Mathias certainly spent much more time on the field at Firhill than the poor old Rodney Sneijder in the same season in Tannadice. It is clear that Archibald was considered worthy of 30 performances in all competitions, it is clear that Archibald did not consider him completely useless.
In fact, there was even a period in which Pogba seemed to have driven the club legend Doolan permanently from the only pointed role in the preferred formation of Archibald, which means that six starts of eight competition matches during the spring.
However, the goals would not come. Pobga succeeded in a total of two of that period, both against Hamilton Accies – only to prove that the South Lanarkshire -Outfit then had the same cursed energy as now.
“He was very good against accies, every time we played on Hamilton, he would also give them hell and score,” Forrest recalls. “He clearly had something about him. But in the end he was one of the many strikers that we had around that time, besides Ade Azeez, Nathan Eccleston, Ryan Stevenson, etc. They all go a bit, but Pogba stands out because it was so strange that he was in the first place. '
And what about Paul? Mathias made the next claim during his early days Firhill: “Of course Paul is now a Partick Thistle supporter and he follows our results closely from Italy.” No matter how pleasant it had been for Distelfans to entertain daydreams of the former Ballon d'Ordeder who swung through Munn's Bar of Maryhill Lidl, the actual spottings were rare.
“Paul was definitely about once or twice to see us being hammered by Celtic in Parkhead, it was a big talk point,” laughs Forrest.
The last four performances by Mathias in a Thistle Jersey took place the next summer in the group stage of the Betfred Cup. His third and final goal on the Scottish ground (an impressive diving head of a callum booth cross) was scored on Ochilview in a 4-1 swing by Stenhousemuir.
After having hit the threshold of 25 performances during the 2015-16 campaign, the striker actually led a contract extension. Nevertheless, when the Deadline Day came from the transfer, he was gone, somehow somehow in a striking movement to Eredivisie-Outfit Sparta Rotterdam.
Of course, the reason that the name of Mathias is still never far from Distelfans's lips such as Forrest to this day, have nothing to do with the four goals he collected in the Dutch top flight, or indeed something that happened at clubs such as Manchego Real or Tabor Sezana during a next nomadic period.
'People certainly kept him when he went to Rotterdam and were then rejected by [German third-tier side] KFC Uerdingen because it is overweight, “Forrest adds. “He then went on a good travel phase and toured over Spanish non-league before he ended up in Slovenia of all places. It was certainly nice to find out where he would end the next.
“Be, shall we say,” Family Ruzy “was big news as you would expect. Although he was gone with us for years, we heard about it (his attempt to squeeze money from his brother), people thought: “This is thistle”. You will never get an ex-heard or Aberdeen player who does that! '
Two years after the abrupt departure of Mathias, and partly because of the constant failure of the Jags to find a reliable goal scorer who was not called Kris Doolan, Distel were relegated and they still have to return to the top flight. Veteran -midfielder Stevie Lawless is now the only player from that time that is still in the books.
Regarding their former No. 99? Het Laatste Nieuws is that he has been written down at the Belgian Minor League-Outfit Sint-Niklaas, for whom the 34-year-old scored a late competition-winning double during his debut in March. Where Mathias then ends, he can be sure that a small community of football train spotters spread throughout Northwest Glasgow will look with interest.
“I don't know if everyone keeps a close eye on him as I, although I am very much in the top rate of Mathias Pogba enthusiasts under the thistle support,” Forrest admits. “I would certainly say that he is somewhat loving.
“He wasn't very good, but at least was very funny. Non-Thistle fans still raise him to this day.
'If you can't be good, be funny, and Mathias has nailed the assignment about it. If he ever finds another run-out when accessories are back in New Douglas Park, I am the first to buy a ticket. '