The Wrexham star who never existed...
How The Town became embroiled in a truly weird transfer scam...
For those who aren’t familiar with UK football’s greatest transfer scam, the story goes something like this…
The year was 1996, and Southampton manager Graeme Souness received a phone call. On the other end of the line was FIFA World Player of the Year George Weah, who wanted to give Souness a tip. His super-talented cousin - PSG star and international striker Ali Dia - was available. For free.
Desperate for forwards to fill his injury-ravaged squad and happy to trust the judgment of the best player on Planet Earth, Souness signed Dia, adding him to the squad for a game at Leeds. When Matt Le Tissier had to come off in the first half, Dia was summoned into action.
His performance was quoted as being “embarrassing to watch”, with the forward floundering around like “Bambi on ice” before suffering the ignominy of becoming a sub who is then subbed off.
“He didn’t do well today,” grumbled Souness in the post-match interview.
It quickly became apparent as to why. Dia was not a PSG star; he was not an international; and he was not related to George Weah. Southampton had been conned into giving a Sunday League standard player an hour of pitch-time in Europe’s top division.
It was a humiliating episode for the club - but they weren’t the only ones who fell for the ruse. Apparently, Dia had pulled the same trick to earn transfers to clubs in Finland and Germany before sneaking his way onto the Saints subs bench.
It’s difficult to imagine Dia getting away with this today, where you can access someone’s entire career history by simply typing their name into a box. But transfer scams still happen. In fact, Wrexham actually became embroiled in one very recently…
It was the first full season of the Hollywood era, and as Reds scoured the internet in the hope of seeing an announcement we’d signed a new star for our promotion push (eventually Ollie Palmer would arrive), they instead found posts by Prestatyn Town: Who were boasting about buying our former hero Charley McMillan Lopez.
Prestatyn announced they were “extremely excited” by the transfer and posted a highlight reel of Lopez banging in goals in front of a packed Cae Ras to show everyone what they could expect from this classy forward.
This was odd, because nobody in Wrexham could remember Lopez even playing for us, never mind scoring.
Turns out we weren’t mad. Lopez had never pulled on a Red shirt in his life.
Prestatyn had audaciously cut and pasted goals scored by real Wrexham players - including Devonte Redmond - and tried to pass these off as Lopez’ own.
It didn’t work, and Prestatyn were quickly attacked from all sides by astonished - and amused - supporters.
“They're either up to something iffy or genuinely stupid,” remarked one fan.
Had Lopez created the fake video to earn a transfer, with a lack of due diligence from Prestatyn? Or were The Seasiders just trying their luck by editing the footage themselves? Given the baffling regime in place at Prestatyn Town during that period, the latter seems most likely.
In any case, the jig was up within hours, and a panicked Prestatyn Town social media manager quickly erased all the tweets and videos associated with Lopez.
Things got even stranger when the striker failed to turn up for his first match, with the club claiming - in cryptic fashion - that Lopez couldn’t make it because he had got “stuck in Crewe”. Nobody ever gets trapped in Crewe. If the town is famous for anything, it’s the myriad of railway tracks that offer paths out of the bloody place.
The transfer window does create these kinds of calamities from time to time. The need to feed supporters’ insatiable appetite for new signings means people can put their foot in it: Sky Sports were so desperate to break the news of a transfer once, they fell for a prank from a fake Aberdeen FC account that said Yerda Selzavon (Yer Da’ Sells Avon) had been joined the team. Still, the Lopez saga was so noteworthy because of its boldness: The whole thing stunk of a bravado that Ali Dia would have applauded.
Indeed, some people began to question whether Lopez even existed in the first place, and we probably aren’t too far away from scams involving AI-generated players. But he is - seemingly - a real person.
Local news outlets described Lopez as pulling on a shirt for Porthmadog FC as recently as 2024. His debut highlight? The moment when he beat the offside trap and “ran through on goal but completely mishit his shot”.
This summer’s transfer window will be a busy one and there is plenty of nonsense set to come our way over the coming months, but it will do well to produce anything as ridiculous as the episode featuring Charley McMillan-Lopez: The Wrexham Star Who Never Existed.