The world’s finest footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, A-list actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Marvel movie star, Tom Hardy, have sensationally lent their support to Beeston FC.

The Juventus winger, along with three teammates and the actors, plus a string of other players and celebrities, have signed Beeston FC shirts, which the club is now auctioning on eBay to raise money for their new clubhouse.

Please bid for these fantastic shirts by following this link (you have to scroll down a bit!): Beeston FC Celebrity Shirts on eBay

The unlikely and extraordinary haul of talent has come about after a couple of parents used their connections and two young Beeston players, Betsy Green, 9, (pictured) and Esme McNicholas, 14, searched far and wide appealing for help for their club.

Juve already has a strong connection with Nottingham, since the Turin club’s history is intertwined with Notts County, which helped to oil the wheels in northern Italy when a Beeston FC parent called on them for business and left a shirt.

As well as Ronaldo, Paulo Dybala, Juan Cuadrado and Douglas Costa, who is on loan at Bayern Munich, also signed for the small-town club.

And local film director and huge football fan, Shane Meadows, who created This Is England and The Virtues, raided his contacts book to secure the actors’ signatures, which includes cast members from the forthcoming Marvel movie sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

The Marvel stars persuaded their mate, Academy Award-winning actor, Leonardo DiCaprio to sign, too!

Six shirts are now available for sale with an extraordinary cast of signatories:

The Juve Shirt:Cristiano Ronaldo, Paulo Dybala, Douglas Costa and Juan Cuadrado.

The Hollywood and Marvel Movie Shirt:Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson and Stephen Graham.

Soccer AM:Fenners, Jimmy Bullard, Tubes.

The Redknapp Family:Harry Redknapp and Jamie Redknapp.

Forest Legend: Peter Shilton

City Ground Ace:Stan Collymore

Beeston FC is delivering a £600,000 project to build a new clubhouse and improve pitches for the 250 children and 40 adults who play for the club in Beeston Rylands.

The money raised from the auctions will pay for tables, chairs, kitchen equipment and all the fixtures and fittings needed to make the community facility, which is already under construction with the help of a grant from The Premier League and FA Facilities Fund, a success.

Sarah Green, club development officer at Beeston FC, who has masterminded the fundraising campaign for Trent Vale, said: ‘So many people have put so much into our fundraising. We are very lucky to have lots of motivated parents. And this is an amazing development.

‘Who would have thought Ronaldo and Leonardo DiCaprio would be giving us a helping hand? It is just incredible what people can do when they pull together. And we are so, so grateful to all these fab celebrities for taking the time. It is a wonderful thing.’

The Juve Connection
Portuguese international Cristiano Ronaldo, 35, is often considered to be the best footballer in the world, having won five Ballon d’Or and four European Golden Shoes, both of which are records for a European player.

The Portugal captain has made 68 appearances for Juventus in Serie A, as well as famously spending nine years at Real Madrid and six years at Manchester United.

And yet, Ronaldo ‘signed for Beeston FC’ along with Juventus forward, Paulo Dybala, wingback Juan Cuadrado and winger Douglas Costa, who is currently on loan at European champions Bayern Munich.

The generous support from Juventus, who currently sit fifth in Italy’s Serie A, to Beeston, (who are 12th in the first division of the Notts Senior League), is not quite as unlikely as it sounds.

There is a strong link between Juventus and Nottingham.

Juve derived its famous black-and-white striped kits from Notts County, whose Meadow Lane stadium is only a few miles down the river from Beeston FC’s Trent Vale ground.
When Juve’s washed out pink shirts were in need of replacement in 1903, one of the players, Englishman John Savage, turned to a mate in Nottingham for help, and he sent out a black-and-white Notts County strip.

The Italians have never forgotten the gesture and when the club moved to their new Juventus Stadium, now the Allianz Arena, in 2011, Notts were invited to play in an exhibition match as part of the opening ceremony. It finished 1-1.

The four Juventus players were happy to lend their names to the Bees, when one of the parents of two young players at the club, took a shirt to Turin while he was visiting on business.

‘It is so generous of these players to support us,’ said Florian Laborde, who coaches the U8 mixed team at Beeston, and works for a technology company, Kistler, through which he has a connection to the Italian giants.

‘The players and the club did not hesitate and we are very grateful. International footballers can seem remote, but most start out at clubs just like ours and they remember and they want to support us.

‘We are very happy. Please bid for the shirts. We want to raise all the money we can.’
While Ronaldo is a household name in England, the other three signatories on the shirts are superstars in their own rights.

Paulo Dybala, 26, is an Argentinian international with 29 caps. The forward has made 164 top-flight appearances for Juve, scoring 68 goals.

Douglas Costa, 30, is a winger who has been capped 31 times by Brazil and is presently on loan at his former club, the current European champions, Bayern Munich, having made 73 Serie A appearances for Juve.

And Juan Cuadrado, 32, is a dynamic wing-back who has 92 Colombia caps and 136 Juventus appearances under his belt.

The Marvel-Hollywood Story
Actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson and Stephen Graham have all, quite incredibly, signed a Beeston FC shirt, too.

Film director, Shane Meadows, famous for hit dramas, This is England and The Virtues, is a huge football fan, who lives in Beeston.

Shane, 47, sent a shirt out to America with his friend, the actor, Stephen Graham, who has starred in Line of Duty and This is England, along with roles in Gangs of New York (2002) The Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Irishman (2019).

Graham, 47, was headed for California where he was filming the final scenes of upcoming Marvel movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a blockbuster that is due out in 2021, and features Hardy and Harrelson.

Hardy, 43, played Alfie Solomons in the BBC mega series, Peaky Blinders, and was the lead role in Taboo, among a string of TV hits. His big screen CV is also extraordinary, appearing in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (2011), Mad Max Fury Road (2015), the depiction of the Kray twins, Legend (2015), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Dunkirk (2017) and as Eddie Brock in Venom (2018).

Harrelson, 59, played Haymitch Abernathy in all three instalments of The Hunger Games, and appeared in War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Venom (2018) and the spectacular, Midway (2019).

When the shirt found its way back to Beeston several months later, the Bees were delighted to see the three names it had hoped for in Hardy, Harrelson and Graham, but were stunned to find an additional name on the bright orange strip: Leonardo DiCaprio.

Graham and DiCaprio, 46, are good pals having struck up a friendship while working together on Gangs of New York, and the star of Titanic (1997), Catch Me If You Can (2002), Django Unchained (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), to name a few, has generously lent his support to Beeston, too.

Sandbanks and Back
Meanwhile, two of the club’s young players, Betsy Green, 9, and Esme McNicholas, 14, have worked tirelessly to persuade other stars to sign for Beeston FC.

They succeeded in a capturing the signatures of the Soccer AM crew on Sky Sports and Nottingham Forest legendary goalkeeper Peter Shilton, 71, who helped The Reds secure the First Division championship and two European Cups (not to mention the record-breaking 125 caps he earned for England).

Next up was Stan Collymore, 49, striker-turned-pundit, who scored 41 goals in 65 appearances in the top flight for Forest, before moving on to Liverpool.

Betsy then captured the signature of one of her favourite football pundits, Harry Redknapp, who managed Spurs, Southampton and Portsmouth, where he won the FA Cup.

Unsure of his address, Betsy simply sent her letter to Harry Redknapp, Sandbanks, Dorset.
One week later, the shirt arrived back, signed by Harry, 73, who also persuaded his son, Jamie, 47, the Sky Sports commentator, who made 237 top flight appearances for Liverpool and was capped 17 times by England, to sign, too.

Betsy, who plays for Beeston’s U10 girls, said: ‘I was most excited when Harry Redknapp sent his shirt back. I did a project about him at school and I am going to invite him to the big, opening do at our clubhouse. I hope he brings his dogs and Jamie could come.’