Bizarre bin posters in Edinburgh are offering £2,000 a month to play football and 'gut fish' in Iceland

The bin poster campaign may not be all it seems.

Once upon a time posters used to entice Scots of sturdy disposition and enterprising outlook to try their luck in The New World with the promise of clean air, land, and new life.

Now a new mysterious poster campaign has been spotted in Edinburgh and other cities across the UK offering people the chance to move to Icleland to play football in their lowest league... while earning up to £2,000 a month gutting fish during the day.

One of the bizarre bin posters in Edinburgh city centre.

The bizarre posters have been spotted plastered across bins in St Andrew Square offering those who flock to the pledge the chance to play for a team called Knattspyrnufelagid Stridsmenn, based in Reykjavik.

With the headline “Earn £2,000 or more a month working and playing in Iceland” the message implores goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and strikers to try their chance at getting into the team by March 2020.

'Completely bizarre'

Further investigation on the club’s website reveals that players are not actually paid at all, but that the club promises to secure employment with ‘one or two of our many sponsors or contacts in the Iceland employment market.’

The website adds: “These companies where our players work are the ones paying their salaries. These players plays for us. On average our players can earn from their jobs, up to the equivalent of £2,000.”

It adds: “Our Icelandic players can work in any kind of jobs they have qualifications for. But as you can appreciate and due mainly to language barrier our foreign players can expect to work in any area of their qualification that do not require Icelandic language proficiency.

"More often our foreign players work In areas such as; store and warehouse goods parking, cleaning jobs, security jobs, Restaurant, hotels and kitchen jobs, fork lift operators, bus driving (if they have license) bakery, care for the vulnerable, fish processing jobs, etc, etc.”

The website claims the club has already been inundated with interest, stating: “We are represented by over 13 players from 13 nationalities from four continents. Players from Thailand, South Korea, Serbia, Portugal, Croatia, France, England, Poland, Nigeria, morocco, Argentina, Brazil and off course Iceland. We play a brand of attacking football with lots of flay [sic].

“We are very ambitious and wants [sic] to gain promotion into the 3rd division by the end of 2020 summer campaign.”

However the website’s team section was last night completely blank. Further enquiries by the Evening News with the Icelandic FA confirmed the team is not actually yet registered and has not played any competitive games, although an application is understood to have been received.

Last night a Scottish football insider said: “I have never heard of a football team recruiting players like this, with posters on bins in foreign countries. It is completely bizarre, If it looks to good to be true it probably is and I would urge anybody thinking of using their own money to fly to Iceland for a football trial for a fourth tier club to take extreme caution over what they get involved in.”

The website maintains trial dates are being held on January 13-17, February 24-28, and March 23-27.