British teen poses a football journalist on Twitter, gains more than 20,000 followers

Fake it 'til you make it?

A 16-year-old North London boy recently fooled thousands of Twitter users by posing as a football journalist.

Using the name Samuel Rhodes — and posting a stock photo of a blond salesman in his profile — Sam Gardiner claimed to be a freelance writer for the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph.

He later confessed to the Financial Times that he wanted people to take his opinions seriously — and believed that propagating rumours was the fastest way to gaining followers.

"It was the only way to get big," he said, emphasizing that wasn't in it for the money. He just wanted to build a platform for his views on football.

"Everyone has opinions, not everyone has access to the transfer market."

At the height of his online "success," Gardiner, now 17, had 25,000 Twitter followers. Even professional football players were fooled by the ruse and engaged in online conversation with Gardiner to further discuss trade-deal rumours.

He posted football news and rumours sourced from other papers, imitating the language of sports journalists and posting directly after matches. The inside sources Gardiner claimed to have? It was all his imagination.

One lucky prediction in 2012 — that Chelsea would fire their manager — "got me a lot of credibility," he said.

When he tweeted that Mohamed Salah was finalizing a £9m deal to move to Liverpool, Al Jazeera picked up the story.

"I made this up in my living room!" Gardiner said, admitting to feeling "a tiny bit of guilt" about starting rumours.

It wasn't until the Daily Telegraph asserted that no one named "Samuel Rhodes" worked for them that the teen's account was suspended.

Gardiner's game was up.

"We can admire his chutzpah, but sadly not his journalistic efforts," said a spokesperson for the Financial Times said.

Gardiner's new goal: to become a real journalist.