Akcelrod managed to fool an elite European club into believing he was a real player, A fake footballer has told the story of how he convinced a Champions League club to offer him a £15,000 per week contract.
At 10 years old, the Frenchman was like any young boy with a dream. The only problem was he was terrible at football. His own father thought he was so bad that he banished him from playing out of pure embarrassment.
Recalling his first memory of football, Paris-born Akcelrod told mail: ‘
I played my first game in front of my father at 10 years old. It was like the Champions League final for me.
‘We played against a good team and we lost 4-0. When we were in the car on the way back he said, “Greg, I am so upset. You are so bad. You are so lazy. I don’t want to see you anymore on a football pitch.”
‘I was shocked. Being with my friends on the football pitch was the best time of my week.’
Between the age of 10 and 18, Akcelrod was banned from playing football due to his lack of ability. The youngster only ever played in his garden but still never gave up the dream of playing professional football – mainly as he wanted to prove his dismissive father wrong.
One day at school, an idea struck – Akcelrod created a fake website that claimed he was a professional player playing for PSG’s reserves.
Akcelrod Story
He would copy and paste match reports from the L’Equipe newspaper and took out the name of the star striker – such as Nicolas Anelka – and replaced it with his own.
The information wasn’t a complete lie – Akclerod was playing for PSG – but for the club’s amateur side in the bottom tier of French football – a level which he himself describes as ‘the worst in France’.
The 38-year-old claimed:
‘You can be Cristiano Ronaldo in the fifth team and nobody watches you. Nobody watched me at PSG because it was just for “kick and run” players.’
At this point, Akcelrod had been cut off by his affluent family for choosing football over a proper education and career.
At 19, the Frenchman, whose grandmother inherited a fortune from Oscar-winning actor Maurice Chevalier after a 15-year marriage, was working in McDonald’s and living in a small studio flat in France.
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As part of the facade, Akcelrod even went to the effort of sneaking onto the PSG pitch one day to take ‘official’ photos of him in full PSG kit. His website and CV were then sent to some of the biggest clubs in England.
Chelsea, Manchester City, and Arsenal turned him down, but second-tier side Swindon Town gave him a shot in the summer of 2003.
It was one of two occasions where the player trialed with the Robins.
‘On the first day of the trial I was so unfit physically and tactically I was lost,’ Akcelrod recalled.
‘In the practice game, the goalkeeper hit a long ball, I tried to head it but it hit me square in the face. Everybody laughed.’
The Frenchman wasn’t selected for the second day of the trial but still turned up at the County Ground for the other players’ practice match in front of the fans.
Irrespective of his talent, Akcelrod’s persistence was noted and manager Andy King gave him a second chance by giving him 20 minutes in a practice game. But no contract was offered – his first day at the trial had done enough damage.
There were offers amid the rejections too. Professional clubs in Luxembourg offered Akcelrod a contract but the Frenchman turned them down – they were too ‘small’ for him.
But the right offer nearly came in the summer of 2009, when Akcelrod was asked to train at Bulgarian side CSKA Sofia, who had just qualified for the Champions League.
Convinced he was a PSG reserve team player, CSKA offered him a three-year contract worth £15,000-a-month – but an unfortunate series of events involving the club’s supporters saw the Bulgarian side spot the striker’s problem.
Akcelrod recalls: ‘
I did the two-day trial and on Sunday the coach told my agent that he wanted to sign me.
‘They took photos of my in the CKSA official jersey, I signed the contract, they published on the CSKA website that I was signing.
‘But it was the PSG fans who destroyed me. Overnight, one CSKA Sofia fan contacted a PSG online forum and asked, “We are about to sign Greg Akcelrod, what do you think about him?”
‘All the PSG fans didn’t know me. They said I was fake, they checked my website. But some of it was true, the video at Swindon for example.
‘The CSKA fan contacted every journalist in Sofia and it was revealed the club were going to sign a fake player.’
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When Akcelrod came down for breakfast on Monday morning, nobody from CSKA wanted to know him anymore and he was asked to head back to France.
The Frenchman had other trials in Greece, Kuwait, and Canada and a year playing for Mississauga Eagles in the top Canadian division was enough for him to finish his story.
Akcelrod is not the first prankster to fool a top football club. The most famous example is Ali Dia back in the 1990s, who fooled Southampton and manager Graeme Souness into agreeing on a one-month deal.
Dia signed for the Saints in 1996 after Souness was contacted by someone claiming to be World Player of the Year George Weah. He recommended that Southampton sign his ‘cousin’ Dia, who had allegedly played and scored for PSG and Senegal.
Dia featured in one five-a-side trial and the next day faced Leeds United in a 2-0 defeat. He never made a second appearance for Southampton.
