15 Footballers With Bizarre Side Jobs

Romanian Gheorghe Popescu represented a string of clubs throughout his accomplished career, yet it was during his stint at Universitatea Craiova throughout the eighties where he was moonlighting as a government informant. This revelation shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The Securitate, the secret police agency of Communist Romania, were known to have 11,000 secret agents and a further 700,000 government informants on their books.

In 1988, Popescu played 13 games on loan for Steaua Bucharest, arch-rivals of government-funded Dinamo Bucharest. The government was already bugging Steaua offices and prevented players from signing for the club. Many have since questioned whether Popescu’s loan move was just another attempt by the Communist state to destabilise Steaua.