Crypto token hyped by Inter Milan and Croatia players fell by 98% – ‘Everything turned to dust’

Huy, a college student from Vietnam, had just started getting interested in the world of cryptocurrency last year when a video popped up on his Instagram feed.

It featured footballers Romelu Lukaku, Achraf Hakimi, Ashley Young and Marcelo Brozovic — all Inter Milan players at the time — repeating the same phrase.

“I love football and I love crypto,” said each player, in separate selfie videos. “Follow the best crypto project ever. Stay tuned!”

The advert was for a new digital token called FootballStars, which promised to revolutionise the world of football with exciting new games and features, and send users “to the moon” via skyrocketing prices to enrich those like Huy who bought the token early.

At the same time, in May and June last year, Croatian players were taking centre stage in some of the sport’s biggest moments.

Mateo Kovacic won the Champions League with Chelsea, Ivan Perisic scored against the Czech Republic at Euro 2020 and Brozovic helped to power Inter Milan to their first Serie A title in a decade.

All three players were among those promoting FootballStars token on their social media feeds, with the adverts reaching tens of millions of football fans around the world.

I have joined @FootballStarsIO community and my NFT will be available on footballstars marketplace! pic.twitter.com/Wi2Dh7L3WA

— Mateo Kovacic (@mateokovacic8) June 9, 2021

The value of the token has plummeted 98 per cent from its peak, meaning fans who bought the tokens last summer and held on to them have lost huge sums of cash.

“Everything turned to dust,” Huy told The Athletic. “I decided to leave the project with a loss of around 70 per cent.

“I lost belief in some footballers after this — especially Mr Kovacic, who is the player from my favourite team Chelsea.”

This is just the latest example of footballers with huge social media followings promoting schemes related to cryptocurrencies and NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Separate examples have been endorsed by Paul Pogba and Andrew Robertson, while John Terry’s NFT collection plummeted in value by 90 per cent.

In many cases, these obscure new digital assets briefly surge in value, hyped by endorsements from celebrities, and then dramatically crash — often leading to real human misery.

Mario Frau is an Italian architect who says he lost “a few thousand dollars” after seeing several Inter players promote the FootballStars token on social media and deciding to buy up lots of the tokens in an attempt to make some money.

“The price started dropping all of a sudden, because (the founders) dumped the coins they had, and so what you bought was no longer worth anything,” says Frau. He is still in a group on social media platform Telegram, hoping something new will be announced to boost the value of the token so he might scrape back some of his original investment.

“Nobody has anything left to lose by having the coin that is worth zero and expecting to see what happens,” he says. “If nothing happens, it can’t get worse than this.”

Many football fans and cryptocurrency enthusiasts may be under the impression that a financial asset must be highly regulated if it is promoted by a household name celebrity to their massive social media following.

This is often far from the case, however. The world of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens is barely regulated, and in a complex situation spanning national borders like this one, there is little that people who lose large sums can do.

Finally the footballstars defi is online. You can stake cake and earn $fts at https://t.co/Yc0FVGviTV. Also join our telegram group at https://t.co/kN8zsX3OEw Welcome to the family of footballstars. #stakecake #stakingcake #footballstarsio @davidecrypto @FootballStarsIO

— Marcelo Brozovic (@brozocrypto) October 14, 2021

The FootballStars token, which is not regulated in Italy or Croatia, also piqued the interest of football fans on social media far away from Europe, in places where average incomes are far lower and therefore losses hit harder.

“Since they were promoting it with some of the big name football players, I thought this is a legit project and invested some decent amount,” Yarzar, a football fan and cryptocurrency enthusiast from Myanmar, told The Athletic. “It turned out we can no longer access their website.”

Yarzar was savvy enough to sell his portfolio when it had only fallen by half but he still faced a substantial loss.

“A little bit of luck helped me avoid losing everything, and that’s pretty much it,” he adds.

Almost all the players who promoted FootballStars on their social media feeds appear to have a connection to either Inter or the Croatia national team. Brozovic calls himself a “cryptocurrency evangelist” in his Twitter bio but he has removed a link to FootballStars.

He frequently tweeted about the project and encouraged fans to join a Telegram group relating to the project.

The chat is now full of people furious at being “scammed” and “deceived” by a project they thought would skyrocket in value after being hyped by football superstars.

Huy, the Vietnamese student, says he was banned from the group when he started posting about how the token was losing its value.

Brozovic also shared images of the tokens going up in value but has been silent since it dramatically dumped, then flatlined, leaving investors out of pocket. He previously shared Coshi Inu, another obscure cryptocurrency project that shot up in value before crashing.

The Athletic contacted all the players named in the article. A spokesperson for Romelu Lukaku confirmed he did not mean to promote FootballStars and took no money from the company. The others declined to comment.

FootballStars did not respond to a request for comment.

(Top photos: Getty Images)