Premier League cult hero was spy for secret service and got three years in prison

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The name's Popescu, Gheorghe Popescu.

Tottenham fans might not remember their Romanian defender as being football's answer to James Bond. However, before he rocked up on these shores, the defender was employed as a spy - tasked with snitching on team-mates.

While on the up at first club Universitatea Craiova, Popescu, who turned 57 on Wednesday (October 9), acted as an informant on his team-mates who were feared to be a defection risk as they were regularly playing European football in the late 1980s.

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Shaken but not stirred, he originally denied helping the secret police, who were under the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceacescu - but he later admitted to signing a document promising to 'defend the national interests’.

There was little choice but to cooperate for Popescu. He was one of 700,000 informants in the eastern European nation at that time, which equated to 4% of the population.

Once communism fell in Romania in 1989, Popescu was able to spread his wings, heading to PSV Eindhoven where he spent four years. He'd turned down a move to Real Madrid in favour of venturing to the Netherlands, and later joined their rivals Barcelona from Tottenham in a £3million deal in 1995.

It was during his solitary season at White Hart Lane that English fans might best remember him. However, in his home country he became infamous after retirement.

In 2014, he was back in the headlines a decade later when he and seven others were convicted by a Romanian appeals court of money laundering and tax evasion, in connection with the transfer of football players.

Popescu was sentenced to a jail term of three years and one month but was released after 18 months in November 2015 for good behaviour.

The 57-year-old has returned to football, though, and he is chairman of Liga 1 side Farul Constanta, where his son Nicolas plays.

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