Football Fake

This week saw the premiere of possibly the greatest hour-long TV special ever made about the beautiful game. For those of you lucky enough to stumble across Sky Three at 9 the other night, the title of the show will be all too clear. For those of you as yet unenlightened, the program in question was ‘Football Fake.’ To quote Sky’s own on-screen TV guide, the program examined:

“How have a number of men have passed themselves off as professional footballers? Various managers have been fooled into signing fake footballers but how did they manage it?”

Of course this was the expose that we at STT have been waiting on for a couple of years now. Playing as a biography of Frank Lampard, the show charted his rise to the top of both the club and also International circuits through various pieces of stock footage and conjecture. It turns out that Frank actually created a fraudulent alias for himself, who acted on his behalf to contact various football clubs around the country and offer them fake certification of youth careers at a range of top flight sides.

West Ham United took the bait and before you can say “two pie, two chips, and you better make them both LARGE chips,” a contract was signed. Obviously in training it became quickly clear that Fat wasn’t actually a footballer, but to spare the board’s blushes, the young Lampard was fast-tracked to the first team and the media-hype machine started ominously spinning. Soon, other clubs heard how fantastic this new West Ham prospect was, and offers started to fly in without any of them actually ever seeing him play.

In an epic finale, the show went on to tell of that fateful night when Lampard’s move to Chelsea was agreed. One night all the chairmen of the London Premier League clubs got together for their monthly ‘scissors-paper-stone night’ and, not for the first time, former Hammers chairman Terry Brown had a little bit too much to drink and ended up spilling the beans about Lampard’s fake career. The uproar was immeasurable, with several of those chaps interested in buying him actually taking part in the game. So now no-one wanted Lampard; he had gone from the hottest property in London (aside from Keeley’s rack of course) to as unwanted as a dose of the clap. It was decided that the only way to settle this was to play for him, loser had to sign him.

15 rounds of scissors- paper-stone later and Mr Brown was shattered, barely holding on in the all-against-all tournament, but in an unforeseen show of bravado, decided to play ‘rock’ against Chelsea’s then-owner Peter Kenyon. The gamble paid off as Kenyon played ‘scissors.’ The screams could heard echoing throughout the night and it came as no surprise when he resigned shortly after, so humiliated at what he had inflicted upon his beloved club.

So now will action finally be taken? The world knows the truth. The metaphorical cat is out of the bag. Can someone please stop this clown ever playing professional football again please?