Alessandro Zarrelli (5 September 1984 – 21 November 2018) was an Italian con-man and amateur footballer who featured on a 2006 Sky TV one off-documentary called Super Fakes in the United Kingdom where he had attempted to dupe several professional football teams into signing him as a player by sending faxes claiming to be a member of the Italian Football Federation. A midfielder, he later played semi-professionally for a number of British non-league clubs most notably Northwich Victoria and Queen's Park. He died on 21 November 2018 after a car crash on the A505 road in Cambridgeshire.
Super Fakes documentary
In 2006, he was featured on a Sky TV documentary Super Fakes which covered the stories of Zarrelli and Ali Dia who had both attempted to con professional football clubs into signing them. The show focussed on Zarrelli's activity during the 2004–05 season and featured interviews from the coaches and owners who came into contact with him during this period. Zarrelli, at the time, was a young Italian amateur footballer who began sending fraudulent faxes to clubs in Northern Ireland and Wales posing as an Italian football executive who was offering clubs the chance to sign an up-and-coming young professional footballer on a cultural exchange loan from the Italian Football Federation. The letter was signed by an Italian executive named Matteo Colobase; in reality Colobase did not exist and was Zarrelli himself. The faxes stated that the footballer on offer had supposedly played at youth level for clubs such as Sheffield Wednesday and Rangers. In reality Zarrelli was an amateur player who had once played youth team football for A.C.D. Asti but ultimately had never played professionally nor had he been attached to any of the clubs the letter claimed he had been a part of. He also claimed his brother had previously played for Torino which was also untrue. The first club he contacted was in January 2005, when he approached IFA Premiership side Lisburn Distillery, who eventually were duped into signing him on a short-term deal, but he was released after an underwhelming performance in a friendly against Finn Harps. He then contacted Welsh Premier League side Bangor City in July 2005, who were unaware of his previous exploits in Northern Ireland, but after staying with the club ten days, manager Peter Davenport contacted Mike Rigg who worked for Zarrelli's supposed former club Sheffield Wednesday. Rigg said that they had never heard of him, equally Glasgow Rangers also confirmed that they had no knowledge of the player ever being on their books and Antonelli Valenti of the Italian Football Federation said Zarrelli's name appeared nowhere on the association's database at any level. Suspicions started to arise during his time at Bangor, when he requested a wage of £200 a week despite initially stating in one of his letters that his wages would be supplied by the FIGC.
Davenport said "He was only here for about a week to ten days. In that time, I checked a bit into his background and it didn't add up. He arrived here with a broken nose, so he never actually played for Bangor. He just took part in one warm-up session. He wasn't anything special." Whilst staying with the club, he stayed in the town's Regency Hotel, owned by one of the club's directors, in which upon his departure, he failed to settle his bill. He also spent a brief spell with Connah's Quay Nomads where he was once again found out. Nomads secretary Bobby Hunter said of Zarrelli "He was your stereotypical smooth Italian. He certainly looked the part but he couldn't play to save his life. Our manager Neville Powell wasn't interested in him. I wondered why the Italian FA would want to send the cream of their youth to Connah’s Quay.". He later tried his luck in approaching Welsh Premier League champions Total Network Solutions FC just after they had met Liverpool in the preliminary stages of the UEFA Champions League. "We didn't pursue it, we did our homework beforehand" said TNS secretary, Ian Williams.