This is just amazing. Stuck in our American-centric sports sphere, we often forget the mega-popularity of soccer and by extension the fame of those who play the game. Kolo Toure earns £90,000 a week. That is approximately $145,000 american dollars. A week. In other words, he's a big star. The kind of star who needs to walk around with a hat and sunglasses covering his face to avoid being recognized.
The Manchester City defender told pretty Kessel Kasuisyo his name was Francois and showered her with expensive gifts he claimed he bought with cash he made selling motors, she claims.
And in a desperate bid to keep his real identity secret, she says, the £90,000-a -week star would sneak into her council flat wearing sunglasses with a baseball cap pulled over his face.
Smitten Toure, 31, kept up the astonishing facade for two years.
He married the mother of his two children during the alleged affair and even carried out a bizarre pretend proposal to Kessel, 22 – getting down one one knee to give her a £1,000 diamond ring.
For two years Toure played the role of most successful car salesman in the history of car salesmen until Kessel's girlfriend—it's always the girlfriends, right guys?—figured it out. She told Kessel to Google "Kolo Toure" to see what turned up. Not only did she see pictures of her doting Francois, but there were wedding pictures.
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, Kessel says: "I am devastated. On some of the wedding pictures he is crying but a few weeks before he was in my bed.
"Two or three weeks after the wedding he was at mine. Around the time he got married he called and said he was back in Africa and had just sold two cars.
"I believed everything he said, I am hurt and confused by it all. Maybe he wanted me to be a second wife. I just don't know. Everything about his strange behaviour now all makes sense."
According to the Mirror, Kessel took the picture above of Toure in the shower. With a bevy of contenders, it is by far the best part of this story.
Married Man: City star Kolo Toure tricked student into affair by claiming to be a car salesman [Mirror]