IN DISGUISE?

beard in search of spinning glory. FFT finds out if he’s the real deal

Identity theft on the dancefloor? A DJ doppleganger? FFT simply must find out.

Football credentials first: was he also a creative type on the field? “My signature was the blind heelpass,” says Cesare. “I also used to gently stroke my opponent’s earlobe when they weren’t looking, as a distraction. In Brazil, they call this mind trick the ‘Cesare Tickle’.”

Sounds plausible. Brazilian players have made records before, of course, notably the music lover and brilliant baritone Pele. Not that Cesare would ever jam with him. “I’ve no interest in working with amateurs,” he parps. But he does seem to DJ in London rather a lot. Indeed, some scurrilous rumours suggest that he’s just a beardy English bloke.

“The story is doubtlessly entirely made up,” scoffs one cynical DJ – so we went and tracked down a band recently remixed by Cesare: Vok, from Iceland of all places. How did they discover him? Born into a cricket, rugby union and rugby leaguemad Sydney family, Cahill should never have made it in football. He reveals how a bank loan got him his big break at Millwall, before Everton and the World Cup came knocking. It’s easy to see that he’s one of football’s nice guys.

“We met with him atop a mountain here,” says Vok’s Andri Enoksson. “He never would’ve thought to look us up unless it was for our national team reaching the Euros.” They’re sticking with his story then. Would Vok ever pretend to be footballers to get famous? “There’s no need to,” says Enoksson. “I already have one cap for Iceland.”

Er, right. This might be 2016’s weirdest trend: fantasy football DJS. Or we could just give them all the benefit of the doubt. So, Cesare, do any other Brazilian legends have unlikely new jobs?

“Of course. Cafu is a golfball diver: he’s very good and can find up to 3,000 a day. Taffarel works for a casino in Sao Paulo as a dice tester. The strangest one is Gilberto Silva. He is a panda fluffer.” Cesare may be nuts. But is he Brazil nuts?

To check out Cesare’s stuff, visit soundcloud.com/cesaremusic

This month: something for everyone, from fun and games to extraordinary tales of hardship

Buoyed by promises of contracts that don’t exist, thousands of African kids are lured to Europe every year. Hawkins creates a fake company to infiltrate football’s trafficking problem, learning how rules can be bent and who does the bending. It’s genuinely harrowing stuff. This is rollicking good fun: beginning with a tale of two crossbars at differing heights in the 1888 FA Cup and working forward to the present day, Ward’s chronological journey takes in hypnotists, fourday games and goalscoring referees. Disenchanted with rising ticket prices in the mid’ 90s, Farrell began a oneman protest by refusing to pay entry to another football match. Posing as journalist, player and part of an entourage, this is his lighthearted story.