Fake footballer nearly bagged deal with Champions League club, went on to become Aurelien Tchouameni's agent
All Gregoire Akcelrod wanted to do was to be a professional footballer. It was a goal he had since the age of five when he started to play for his local village club.
He grew up a huge Paris Saint-Germain fan and loved Zinedine Zidane and George Weah. He would play in his garden for two hours every day after school and re-enact France games.
But the problem was that Akcelrod was not good at football. In fact, he was so bad that at the age of 10, his father banned him from playing the beautiful game after watching him play for the first time.
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In an exclusive interview, he told SPORTbible: “I didn’t touch the ball and he said, ‘You are so bad at football, I don’t want you to play anymore’.
“When my dad told me this, it was a big shock for me because football was the best moment of the week.
“It destroyed everything when he told me this. I said to myself that one day he would see that he was wrong and one day I would become a professional football player."
At first, however, he ended up flipping burgers at McDonald's because his old man didn't support his dream.
“I had no choice to work and it’s true that McDonald’s took me very quickly," Akcelrod added.
"It was a big, big difference. Before I had a very wealthy life because my parents are very rich. It was funny the first day but then it was boring because you are working very hard.
“Most of the people don’t respect you so it was exhausting.”
But while at private school when he was 16, Akcelrod came up with a genius idea. Using the computer room, he created a fake website, copying information from the site about Brazilian legend and two-time Ballon d'Or winner Ronaldo Nazario.
He duplicated content relating to Nicolas Anelka and then added his name to teamsheets became his thing later on.
Akcelrod explained: "I also copied an article of L’Equipe saying Nicolas Anelka was going to Real Madrid and I put ‘Gregoire Akcelrod going to Real Madrid’.
“I showed to my friends and they say, ‘Oh it looks so real!’ Because of that blog I had a lot of fun all over the world.
“A few years later I added a video of a friendly game. And what I did is, I created an introduction for the game and I added my name on the teamsheet.
“So when people clicked the video they saw a cup game of Paris Saint-Germain against another club when it was absolutely another game.”
Akcelrod did get a bit better with the ball at his feet and became a "basic player". He never wanted to be Ronaldinho or Cristiano Ronaldo, just an average player.
As he put it, “If tomorrow, you change the right back of Fulham for the right back on Nottingham Forest, nothing would change on the table."
He did genuinely play for PSG, his boyhood club - albeit for the amateur side in the absolute worst of the worst in France's fifteenth division.
But looking at his mocked up photoshoot at their Parc des Princes stadium, you would have thought he was a key player for the Parisians.
“I went to the Parc des Princes shop because I wanted to buy new shoes and I saw one of my friends worked there.
“She looked at me and said, ‘You look depressed’. I said, ‘Yes I think I can never play football professionally so my dream is over’.
“She told me, ‘Come on, my boss is not here I have the key so we can visit Parc des Princes’.
“It was totally unexpected. On when she told me this. I said, ‘Let me first buy the jersey for my brother’.
“In fact, it was for me. So I bought a jersey and put the name on behind. We visited the Parc des Princes and asked her to make some pictures but used it for my website.
“There are the professional team, in Ligue One and the reserves and after there is an amateur club.
“There are three teams who are all very bad. Me, I was playing for the last team, so the worst of the worst team of Paris Saint-Germain.”
“For me it was fantastic to play with Paris Saint-Germain, even though it was the worst division in France.
“When you are fan of a club and can play for any team of the club you are very happy. We played against very bad players and they were very motivated to play against Paris Saint-Germain.”
With his bogus CV, Akcelrod started writing to clubs and trying to arrange trials - telling them he was a striker when he was in fact a defensive midfielder.
He got in touch with both Chelsea and Arsenal. Incredibly, he would receive a response from the legendary Arsene Wenger, framing it and putting it on the wall even though the answer was, 'No'.
"It was incredible that Arsene Wenger had read my letter and answered me.
“It gave me more hope because for me Arsenal was one of the biggest clubs in England but I was sure some clubs in the second, third or fourth division will answer me."
On these shores, Akcelrod trialled with Norwich City, Bournemouth and Swindon Town. He also spent time with Dundee United, in Scotland, as well as Sydney FC and New York Red Bulls as part of his five-continent world tour.
He once got on Sky Sports News and played with former Spurs and England winger Darren Anderton, who he views as the best player he's played with.
“Every trial was different. Sometimes it was horrible, my first trial with Bournemouth it was the first time I played eleven-a-side on the side and I was directly in friendly games with the first team.
“The second trial with Swindon, I was Man of the Match with Sky Sports. I had some quality but I had no resume and also because I lied on my website. If I say the truth that I play for Paris Saint-Germain, the last team in the fifteenth division in France, nobody would give me a chance.
“I had to play for Paris Saint-Germain's professional team. As soon as the clubs called Paris Saint-Germain and they said they didn’t know me, it was the end of the game.”
In total, he had 25 trials but only one was successful. CSKA Sofia, the most successful side in Bulgaria, liked what they saw from Akcelrod after he spent three days with them in pre-season.
It was all coming together. CSKA who were in the Champions League, offered him a £15,000-a-month salary and even published on their website that he had signed.
But then disaster struck as one of the club's supporters hopped on a PSG forum to get some information on what he was like as a player.
The secret was up, as he then got in touch with journalists and exposed Akcelrod, who had his dream crushed.
“Everybody say, ‘Fake, fake, fake’ - be careful. This fan of CSKA Sofia, he sent a message to all the journalists he knew to say that CSKA Sofia was going to be to signing a fake player.
“I was not fake because I was with them three days on trial but CSKA started to become scared of what happened with the crazy media.
“The Sunday evening everybody smiled to me. On Monday morning I am the worst person in the world and cannot sit at the players’ table.
“When I wanted to train with them, they said, ‘No, you take your taxi back to France’. I didn’t know what happened because I didn’t speak the language. It was after, when I was in France, I realised it was a fan who destroyed my deal.”
After his career, Akcelrod decided he did not want to be involved in football anymore. But one day a former coach wanted him to help a young, talented and "amazing" player from Cameroon.
He then ended up taking him to Liverpool for a trial and after posting a picture with the shirt, hundreds of messages flooded in.
“He played in a very small club in the seventh league and bringing him from a small club to Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in Europe, it was so incredible.
“I had so many young people wanting me to be their agent. So, it's that like this. I never wanted to be an agent but because of my experience or because of those people that I meet, I started to work in this business.”
Extremely busy, Akcelrod works predominantly in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and England, where he has a lot of stars under his agency.
He helped former Lyon and Malaga centre-back Bakary Kone move to India, as well as facilitating a transfer for ex Lille player Eric Bautheac to Cypriot outfit Omonia Nicosia.
His biggest former client is Real Madrid and France's €100 million midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni, who he met when he was an unknown quantity.
"I met him when he was 15 when he was at the academy of Bordeaux and at this time of course nobody knows him.
“And it was an amazing experience because it's very interesting to bring a player from small level in France with the youth team to the professional level and to Monaco .
“The first time I saw him, it’s true that I was sure that he would become professional. I was thinking he was like Paul Pogba in the style of play, technique and he will probably will make a bigger career than Paul Pogba.”
Akcelrod has no regrets over the journey he went on and says he never saw football as a business or an opportunity to make money.
He simply wanted to prove his dad wrong, whilst experiencing new cultures along the way. And his next ambition is to become the president of a football club - though he might need to update that website ever so slightly.
“I always paid my hotel, I always I paid my flight ticket. I don't understand why everybody destroyed me so much. Because so many players they lie on their age and so many players signed with fake videos, it's not even them on video.
“I tried my chance; it was difficult because I knew nobody in football but it was an amazing story.”
Topics: France, Aurelien Tchouameni, Real Madrid, PSG
Josh Lawless