When Donald Trump was re-elected as US president in November, pictures resurfaced from an edition of Shoot! magazine in November 1991, which sensationally claimed: ‘Billionaire tycoon Donald Trump once played six games in goal for Wolves’ youth team while his American Air Force father was based in the Midlands’.
It certainly sounded like a good story, although quite how talented a goalkeeper the Don would have made is unclear, considering his infamously tiny hands. He would have been pretty vulnerable on free-kicks, too, given his habit of only half-building a wall.
Yet the story didn’t end there, with Shoot! asserting at the time that ‘one of the racehorses at Trump’s New York stables is a three-year-old filly called Molineux Mayde’.
Donald Trump goalkeeping myth busted
First problem: Trump has only ever been involved with one racehorse, DJ Trump (obviously), which reportedly contracted a virus and never raced. It’s unknown whether Don blamed that particular virus on China and suggested injecting the horse with bleach.
Second problem: Trump’s father, Fred, was never in the American Air Force, and even if he had been, he would have been approaching 60 - too old to be serving in the military - when Donald was old enough to feature for Wolves’ youth team.
In fact, there's no evidence that Trump grew up in the UK, either. He completed secondary school in New York Military Academy, and in 1964, when he would've been 18 and the correct age to play for the Wolves youth team, he enrolled at Fordham University.
His yearbook from the New York Military Academy does highlight that he played a season of high school soccer/football in 1964, with one of his team-mates, Ted Levine highlighting Trump's sporting ability.
"He was just the best, a good athlete, a great athlete," Levine told Business Insider. "He could have probably played pro ball as a pitcher. I think he threw 80 miles an hour. I was the catcher. He made my hand black and blue every day... Could he play football? Could he play soccer? He could do anything he wanted. He was physically and mentally gifted."
Pictures obtained by FOX Sports, though, suggests that Trump didn't play as a goalkeeper - he is wearing the same white kit as the rest of his team-mates except one, who is presumably the goalkeeper in a dark kit.
It goes without saying that Trump's one season playing high school soccer in the US wouldn't have been enough to convince Wolves - a side at the time who were FA Cup and league champions as recently as five years beforehand - to sign him.
All evidence points to fake news.
