Future King Prince William is known to be a huge fan of football – and during a friendly kickabout when he was younger, he joked about using an unusual tactic against an opposing player who wanted to get the better of him

The Royal Family are known to be a sporty bunch, and it seems there is one game that really has Prince William hooked – football.

The 41-year-old is not only the president of the Football Association but also a huge Aston Villa fan and seemingly likes to get stuck into playing the game too. But when it comes to playing in matches, William once revealed a sneaky “sniper” tactic he once employed to put off an opponent because “everyone wanted to break my legs”.

Speaking several years ago on That Peter Crouch Podcast, footy fanatic William admitted jokingly asking his policeman to shine a laser’s red dot on a troublesome player on the opposing while warning “he’s following you!”

William during the recording of That Peter Crouch podcast (Image: PA)

During the recording, which took place at Kensington Palace before the lockdown in March 2020, William confessed: “A long time ago, I got one of my policemen to take a laser pen out with them. And I got him to red mark, red dot one of the players. I kept saying ‘see, see what happened to you’, I was about 15 at the time I said ‘see, he’s following you, following you.”

Former Liverpool, Tottenham and Portsmouth player Crouch howled with laughter, asking: “Pretending to have a sniper on him?” with William replying “exactly it, it put him off for about you know 10 minutes.”

William is a regular at Villa Park, the home of his boyhood club Aston Villa – and it appears oldest son Prince George is also taking an interest in the team. Several weeks ago, they were spotted at a match in their first public outing since the Princess of Wales’ cancer announcement.

Prince William and Prince George at Villa Park earlier this month (Image: Getty Images)

William was seen smiling and applauding in the Villa Park stands in Birmingham with his eldest son, who sported an Aston Villa scarf as the pair celebrated the club’s 2-1 win against Lille in the first leg of the Europa Conference League quarter-final. The pair were seen cheering as they applauded Ollie Watkins’ opening goal for the club. And they would have been equally as happy last week as Villa made it through to the semi-finals of the competition after beating Lille on penalties in the second leg.

Meanwhile, in 2022, William faced criticism for his support of the England football team despite being Prince of Wales. Both England and Wales played in the World Cup in Qatar that year.

And on a trip to Wales before the tournament, the prince diplomatically said: “I’ve supported England since I’ve been quite small. But I support Welsh rugby and that’s my way of doing it. I happily support Wales over England in the rugby so I’ve got to be able to play carefully with my affiliations.

“I worry otherwise if I suddenly drop England to support Wales then that doesn’t look right for the sport either. So I can’t do that.”