Exposing football’s greatest conspiracy - Sergej Milinkovic-Savic doesn’t exist

If you believe the word of international sports media, Serbian midfielder Sergej Milinković-Savić has just completed negotiations on a lucrative move to Saudi Pro League side Al-Hilal. All perfectly normal in this day and age, you might think – but there’s just one small problem. Milinković-Savić doesn’t exist. He never has. He is the greatest conspiracy in global football.

Every single transfer window for the last several years, the former Lazio man has been linked with just about every big club in the Premier League. Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have all been reported as being in negotiations with him on a repeat basis. But nothing ever came of it. No transfer ever materialised, despite endless confident reports that he was on his way. Why? Because there is no Milinković-Savić. He is an invention of Big Transfer Rumour, a construct designed solely to shift copies of newspapers and generate clicks through social media. Take the red pill, my friend, and join me down the rabbit hole…

This all started years ago, before the idea of Milinković-Savić ever occurred to the world’s assembled football media. Knowing that rumours linking players with the biggest clubs in England generated substantial online traffic, but constrained by the relatively small number of players actually being looked at by such teams, a shadowy consortium of football writers from across Europe gathered in a secret underground bunker to begin an experiment – they would create a fictional player that could be linked endlessly with Premier League sides, racking up the impressions and flogging broadsheets without ever needing to exist. The name they came up with was William Carvalho.

Of course, this “Carvalho” had to be both enticing and plausible. He could be a Brazilian, that would sound exciting enough, but ideally a midfielder because a striker would be too flashy - while a defender wouldn’t shift sufficient units on the newsstand. The real masterstroke, however, was having him play for Shakhtar Donetsk – a team with just enough clout to sound like they could have a supremely gifted playmaker on their books, but one that almost nobody in Britain would ever actually watch.

For years, the fake footballer’s name was attached to news stories – in particular, he would be linked with United on an almost weekly basis for years, without any danger of people cottoning on to the ruse. How many people clicked on links promising his imminent arrival at Old Trafford down the years, do we think? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? The media team had done their job, and nobody even realised.

But of course, nothing can last forever. Eventually people would realise that Carvalho was never coming, and in any case, he’d be getting past his prime if he was a real, flesh and blood player. And so Carvalho was quietly canned, and a new played was invented – enter Sergej Milinković-Savić, a versatile and promising midfielder who allegedly played for Genk in Belgium. Again, who would ever go to Genk and check? It’s not like it’s one of Northern Europe’s major tourist hubs.

The conspiracy ran deep, as it had to. Football Manager were cut in on the deal, and made him a stellar signing who would be routinely bought by the world’s biggest clubs for big bucks. Later, Lazio were roped in to provide even more plausibility – who knows what they were offered in some shady backroom deal, but it was enough to persuade the club to list him on teamsheets for years, and the Serie A side’s fans were far too terrifying for anyone to consider actually travelling to their stadium to watch him.

And so our fictitious footballer was attached to transfer rumours on an almost daily basis, summer after summer, January after January, with nobody any the wiser. And it worked. Newspapers were sold, clicks were clicked, and the nobody knew the truth. But despite their success, the murky cabal of writers behind him realised that they had a problem – they had made him too good, too successful, and sooner or later the whole charade would be exposed.

The first sign that they had gone too far was the 2019 Coppa Italia final. Unexpectedly, Lazio reached the showpiece event, a game people might actually pay attention to. The writers persuaded Lazio to name him on the bench, with a paid actor clad in a sky blue tracksuit to fill the role in front of the assembled cameras. But then they hit an unexpected problem, one that could never have been planned for – manager Simone Inzaghi, with the big-match pressure addling his brain, brought the actor on as a substitute. And then the overenthusiastic actor (who, according to my research, was a solid semi-pro in Montenegro before a cruciate injury derailed his career) did something both unthinkable and unspeakably stupid. He scored the opening goal.

Somehow, they got away with it. The British footballing public didn’t pay enough attention to notice the deception, but the writers knew they’d accidentally jumped the shark. Having him play for Lazio was one thing, but winning trophies? Things were getting dicey, and they knew it. Besides, the Montenegrin actor started demanding more and more money for his silence. This could only go on for so long.

Of course, if Milinković-Savić disappeared right away, that really would raise suspicions. So they had him quietly continue plying his trade, paying Lazio handsomely to ensure that the Romans botched any games which might see them qualify for major finals. The actor, his demands constantly escalating, mysteriously vanished from the records somewhere in 2021, his fate unknown. Eventually, things quietened down, and the lie could continue to be spun. Newspapers still needed to be sold, and they’d put their sensationalised Serbian down as young enough to have a few good years yet. There were some sweaty palms and cold feet down in that hidden bunker, but they decided to press on.

But things never got easier. Every time they printed a story that Arsenal were lining up a bid, or that Chelsea were keeping tabs, they increased the chance that one of these teams might get curious and actually send a scout over to Italy. That risk multiplied many times over when Todd Boehly took over at Stamford Bridge.

A plainly gullible man who was distracted by every shiny object that passed across his vision, he was bound to see Milinković-Savić’s name on social media at some stage and bark orders at some unfortunate underling to go and take a look. This was the final straw for the Milinković-Savić project. If the gambit was exposed, who knew what the consequences would be? The problem was that the concocted biography still had him down as being a mere 28, and having him move to some backwater club already would set alarm bells ringing among Britain’s football fans. It was a dilemma in need of a solution.

Then, thank god, Saudi Arabia happened. With the nation’s wealth suddenly funnelled into their football clubs and enormous sums of money being thrown at practically every player in Europe, the writers had their chance. And so it was decided to cut the cord, and claim that he had moved to Al-Hilal for a suitably outrageous sum of money. Again, who would ever check? How many people would actually watch an Al-Hilal game on the telly? Perhaps they’d tune in for the odd game when Cristiano Ronaldo was playing for the opposition, but they could just pretend he was injured. It was perfect. And so Milinković-Savić has gone gracefully and quietly into his retirement, his existence never truly questioned and the cunning plan unexposed. Until now.

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The question is – will this really be the end? They’ve gotten away with it twice. They will try again. There will be a Chilean winger at CSKA Moscow, or perhaps a Georgian wing-back playing in the Austrian Bundesliga. They will be hyped and linked and talked about for years on end, without anyone suspecting a thing. Wake up sheeple. The cake is a lie.