Anyone who has ever played football will have played against someone significantly better than them at some point. Many of us dream that maybe we could have played in the big leagues if only we’d been given a chance, only to come up against the likes of a semi-pro and realise that we would’ve had absolutely no chance to make it at the top of the game.
One group of street footballers found that out in spectacular fashion when a YouTube channel called Shoot for Love got one of Barcelona’s legendary players, Bojan Krkić, to pretend to be a cameraman for the day.
A Youtube Prank
In the August of 2023, Shoot for Love agreed to work with a group of street footballers, pretending to them that they were a Korean documentary team working with Netflix to shoot a show about street football players. One of the people helping to shoot the ‘documentary’ was Bojan Krkić, who had made his way through the Barcelona Academy before playing more than 100 times for the first team.
Early on in the game, the ‘documentary maker’ got ‘injured’, meaning that he couldn’t carry on and had to be replaced. The fact that the filming took place in Spain made what happened even better.
The host of the fake Netflix show was wearing a Barcelona shirt with Bojan on the back, resulting in some of the players talking to him about his ‘favourite player’. Early on in the game, the fake injury was performed and ‘Ben’ took to the field to replace the injured player.
It didn’t take long before ‘Ben’ was running rings around the street footballers, in spite go the fact that he was struggling to breathe because he was wearing a mask in order to hide his identity. After the game, the mask was removed and the real identity of the player was revealed to everyone watching.
Who is Bojan?
For those in attendance, the pleasure of playing with Bojan Krkić must have been palpable once they found out who it was that had been playing so well against them. Born in Catalonia to a Serbian father, which helps to explain his surname, the player joined Barcelona’s La Masia youth system in 1999 and remained part of it until 2006.
He soon made it through the ranks of the club thanks to his speed and his ability to dribble, breaking Lionel Messi’s record for goals scored as part of the Barcelona Academy. When he turned 17, he signed a professional contract.
Back in 2008, Bojan was one of the world’s brightest prospects 🤩
He scored his first league brace for Barca at 17 years old 👶pic.twitter.com/hYLCsbURUL
— GOAL (@goal) March 24, 2021
His debut for the club came on the 16th of September 2007, aged just 17 and 19 days. That made him the youngest player to appear in a La Liga match for Barca, breaking the record that had been set by Messi. He went on to play 104 league games before joining AS Roma in 2011, briefly returning to Spain before joining Ajax on loan.
As a sign of how he failed to live up to his initial promise, he signed for Stoke City in 2014 and remained there for five years before heading to the likes of Alavés, Montreal Impact and the Japanese J1 League side Vissel Kobe at the end of his career.
Shoot for Love’s Other Pranks
As you might imagine, Shoot for Love has carried out similar such stunts over the years. If you’ve ever seen the video of Son Heung-min playing against 100 defenders, for example, you will have seen one of the other videos done by the organisation.
In order to demonstrate that age is no obstacle to ability, Shoot for Love put Dimitar Berbatov in the makeup of an old man in order to get him playing against a group of amateur footballers. He started poorly, intentionally tricking the other players, then began turning on the skills in order to shock those that he was up against.
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They pulled off a similar prank with former Portuguese player Ricardo Quaresma being disguised as a pizza delivery man, whilst also doing some stunts that were more like tests than attempts to trick people. Shoot for Love got Brazilian legend Roberto Carlos to try to smash a door with a football, whilst his fellow countryman Kaka had to try to hit a target on a boat whilst he was located across the water from it.
Son’s battle with 100 defenders wasn’t the only prank that the South Korean pulled off, meanwhile. He also surprised fans getting his photo taken with them on ‘Son’ Day.