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'Celebs' in Tranmere takeover named

Some more detail emerged this week about who is joining Donald Trump’s former lawyer Joe Tacopina in his attempt to buy Tranmere Rovers.

As The Athletic reported last month, Team Tacopina has been in talks with the League Two side’s majority owners Mark and Nicola Palios for more than six months and his proposed takeover is being assessed by the English Football League.

In their report, they explained that the 58-year-old New Yorker wants “to harness the power of his celebrity contacts” to propel Tranmere and SPAL, the Italian third-tier team he owns, up their leagues, and, if the takeover is approved, we should expect a Welcome to Wrexham-style documentary.

Last weekend, the showbiz editor of British newspaper The Sun on Sunday revealed the name of the first of those “celebrity contacts”, although in this case the relationship is also lawyer/client as Tacopina is defending American rapper A$AP Rocky against a charge that he fired a gun at a former friend in Los Angeles in 2021.

For those not familiar with A$AP Rocky’s oeuvre, he was a prominent member of Harlem-based hip-hop collective A$AP Mob, before branching out as a solo artist, entrepreneur and producer. He is perhaps best known, though, for going out with Rihanna, with whom he has two children.

Another of the celebs Tacopina hopes to include in his group, Las Vegas Raiders star Maxx Crosby   It has almost got to the point where it would be strange if a syndicate of American investors trying to buy an English football team did not include a professional athlete or two.

Crosby, unfortunately, is not named after the beach near Tranmere Rovers but his wife did play college soccer and he earns £20million a year — and he is very good at his day job of sacking quarterbacks.

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