Pranksters tricked man into 9-hour drive

SHEFFIELD, England, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- A British man said his wife left him after rival soccer fans tricked him into driving nine hours for a rendezvous with a woman who never existed.

Stuart Slann, 39, a die-hard Manchester United fan, said the Liverpool fans recorded the phone conversation that featured their confession and posted it on Facebook and YouTube along with an embarrassing photograph of Slann, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

Slann said he met the two Liverpool fans during a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, when they traded barbs about their preferred soccer teams and the two men at one point tossed him into a pool. A short time later, Slann said, the two men set up a fake Facebook account claiming to be a woman named Emma in Scotland and arranged for Slann to drive from Sheffield, England, to Aberdeen, Scotland, for a tryst.

"If they had asked to drive to Manchester, Leeds or even Liverpool it wouldn't have been so bad and maybe I'd have seen the funny side," he said to the newspaper. "But to drag me all the way to Aberdeen was just cruel."

He said his marriage to his wife, Louise, 32, ended shortly after the incriminating evidence was posted online by the pranksters.

"There's no doubt that I've been done good and proper by the lads from Liverpool. It was cruel but I'll hold my hands up and say they really wound me up," Slann told The Daily Telegraph.