Have forensic website sleuths blown The Secret Footballer's cover?
With almost 50,000 copies sold, I Am The Secret Footballer was second only to the perennially popular Match Magazine annual as the biggest-selling football book of 2012. A spin-off from the Guardian newspaper column of the same name, I Am The Secret Footballer: Lifting the Lid on the Beautiful Game sold 15,000 more copies than Steven Gerrard's My Liverpool Story and enjoyed almost double the sales of Wayne Rooney's My Decade in the Premier League. Part of that success clearly stemmed from the kind of revelations the author felt safe to share from behind his cloak of anonymity, detailing the pressures and pleasures that come with being young and loaded. There are some serious messages, emphasising how a life of luxury cars and expensive jewellery funded by enormous salaries cannot always be a shield against corrosive self-doubt. The Secret Footballer himself claims to have suffered from depression. On the other hand, tossing in the spicy details of an unnamed f