Andros Townsend's partner mistook Football Manager in a hilarious story shared by the former Everton, Crystal Palace and Spurs winger.
The new Sports Interactive game, FM24, is out for early release and promises more incredible football realism for fans to enjoy.
But nothing will close to Townsend's other half genuinely thinking he had skipped training because she'd seen it on social media.
It happened in 2015, with girlfriend Hazel O'Sullivan sending a panicked WhatsApp text asking how why he had not turned up to training.
The former England international was utterly confused and asked Hazel what she was going on about and for her to show him.
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"I get a text from her one day and I receive a screenshot from Twitter," Townsend explained on talkSPORT.
"As you do, she was searching my name on Twitter and [news of] a fine came up: 'Andros Townsend accepts his fine for reporting late to training'.
"So her mind is going off; if he wasn't at training and he wasn't at home then where was he?
"It could have been a real sticky one!"
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The next message was pure comedy. Hazel sent the Luton Town man a screenshot of a news article where he had "failed to report" to the training ground and acknowledging his "unprofessional behaviour" when at Spurs.
However, it was actually from someone's FM save which was in December 2016.
"She's messaged me and it turns out the screengrab is from the popular video game Football Manager," he continued.
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"Someone's obviously posted it on Twitter having a laugh on Football Manager - and she's thought it was real."
Townsend had to post both screengrabs - his WhatsApp conversation and the FM article - on X, formerly known as Twitter.
It quickly went viral and racked up over 13,000 retweets and 11,000 likes.
Topics: Football Manager
Josh Lawless