Adelaide had offered Rosales a trial after its scouting department performed extensive research through the foolproof media of Wikipedia and Youtube, according to Goal.com. Had anyone at the Australian club bothered to call one of his many previous employers, they would have discovered that Rosales spent the past few years feasting on crosses from the tooth fairy.
Rosales’s trial was announced in conjunction with that offered to Fabio Ferreira — who stands a much better chance of making the squad due to his actual existence on the third stone from the sun.
“It has been a strange few days with all the speculation around this mystery man — it doesn’t look great from our end,” a Reds spokesman said to Sportal, according to Goal.com.
“We’re not the first club to be given a false lead with a supposed trialist, but other clubs probably just don’t promote it to the world like we did.”
The club is accurate in pointing out that it isn’t the only one to have been duped into poor signings over the years.
The case of Senegal’s Ali Dia plays out like an E-Harmony date gone awry for Southampton and its manager Graeme Souness.
Meanwhile, former Portugal head coach Carlos Queiroz gave Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson a real lemon. His recommendation to sign Portuguese forward Bébé — sight unseen — cost United about £8 million ($12.4 million) and left Ferguson feeling like Clark Griswold.
To be fair to Adelaide, Rosales did have an impressive fake resume. Having represented the US at the U-17, U-20, and U-23 levels, the American played at big-name clubs like Ajax, Valencia, and River Plate and put together an impressive Youtube highlight reel.
Had any of this actually been true, he would have been one of the biggest names in American soccer history. Instead, Adelaide is left blushing and Rosales will remain the star feature on Moron Mountain.
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Photo via Flickr/Helen K
