Bukayo Saka? Eddie Nketiah? Ashley Young?!?! Speculation about which Premier League star is living a double life as one of the UK's most exciting emerging new artists is rife, but have internet sleuths correctly identified the player by his tattoos?
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00:00It's probably the greatest bit of marketing in the recent history of British music.
00:08A new rapper bursts onto the scene, rumours fly around that he's actually a Premier League footballer,
00:13his lyrics are loaded with clues about his identity, but crucially, he constantly conceals his face with a mask and never reveals his name.
00:20Ladies and gentlemen, this is D-Day.
00:24Two months ago, a track entitled Intro Freestyle was the first video uploaded to a newly created YouTube channel.
00:30As well as including a number of veiled and not so veiled references to his life as a footballer within the lyrics,
00:35an accompanying website also went live where he directly claimed to be playing in the Premier League.
00:40The football pitch and the actual football branding being slightly more on the nose.
00:44Since then, D-Day has released a full single and music video thrill, another freestyle smoke and havoc,
00:50and the internet has frantically played the masked singer trying to pin the clues to several footballers.
00:55So, who are the most likely candidates to be a Premier League footballer secretly living a double life as an emerging rapper?
01:02The name of the front of the queue is currently Eddie Nketiah.
01:05Despite his name almost being an exact anagram of D-Day, you just sort of take the other D and move it around and it kind of works,
01:12there are also several other components that seem to line up perfectly.
01:16There's a reference to his age being 23 which checks out, a claim that he recently signed a new contract that put him into the seven figure bracket
01:23which Nketiah did for Arsenal last year, and some coded lyrics about having the option to go down a different path or sit on the bench,
01:30and well, yep, there he is.
01:32Most compelling of all though is the prominent imagery of South London in the background of his video.
01:36Nketiah is very proudly from the Lewisham borough of South London, and the Bermondsey area some 15 minutes down the road features in the majority of the thrill video.
01:45Finally, even aside from just the strong South London accent, people just think his voice sounds similar which would, admittedly, be a pretty big giveaway.
01:53However, his isn't the only name in the frame and it isn't even the only one from the current Arsenal squad.
01:58Third favourite with the bookies right now, and yes you can actually bet on this, is Bakayo Saka.
02:04Primarily because again of the perceived similarities between his voice and that of D-Day, Saka also ticks a lot of the same boxes laid out in the clues as Eddie Nketiah.
02:13However, he's still only 21 and not 23, signed his big contract a number of years ago, hasn't really had to go through a prolonged period of sitting on the bench,
02:22and grew up in Ealing in West London as opposed to Lewisham in the South.
02:26Another thing working against him is just the unshakable feeling amongst Arsenal fans especially,
02:31that Bakayo Saka just doesn't seem like the type of person to have a secret rap career.
02:36Seemingly shy, mild-mannered and fully focused on his football, the idea that he also has a secret persona that spits absolute bars on a number of controversial topics in his downtime just feels too far-fetched for many.
02:47More realistic to some though, is his former teammate Alex Iwobi.
02:52Despite being born in Largos, Nigeria, Wobbs was brought up in London and has the accent to match.
02:57He would also definitely have a reason to want to mask his identity, being as a teammate of Dominic Calvert-Lewin he would have seen first-hand,
03:04the reactions some Everton fans and others had to his modelling career.
03:07You can get him at 4-1, making him the second favourite here, but almost none of the clues dotted around his music really seem to fit.
03:14But what's gotten him so low in the odds is that unlike Nketiah, Saka or anyone else you'd care to mention, Iwobi is in his spare time already an actual rapper.
03:24And not just that he does a bit of rapping on the team bus to lift the mood type, he has a full state-of-the-art music studio in the basement of his house and has been quietly making music for the last six years.
03:35Not to get too tinfoil hat about this, but if Iwobi did want to embark on a side gig as the Premier League's secret rapper,
03:41the fact he is already the Premier League's NOT secret rapper would mean he would need to litter his music with red herrings rather than actual clues.
03:48And yes, I am perfectly aware that I'm thinking way too hard about this.
03:52Elsewhere, the bookies will give you decent money on players like Ashley Young, arguably way too old,
03:56Jacob Ramsey, sounds nothing like him, and Ivan Toney, not exactly a world leader in the field of keeping off the field interests entirely secret.
04:05But recently, a new and quite captivating theory has taken a hold, with fans believing they have matched up a tattoo peeking out of D-Day's sleeve to that of a current footballer.
04:14Former Liverpool player and current Cardiff City star, Shea Ojo.
04:18While all the rest of the clues are very hit and miss, he's slightly older than 23 but did grow up in London,
04:23the discovery of this diamond tattoo on his wrist does appear to be the first concrete bit of evidence to date.
04:29However, the imagery accompanying these theories isn't exactly crystal clear, so take that one with as big a pinch of salt as you like.
04:35Ojo's a fascinating candidate though, given that the marketing and interest surrounding D-Day is that he is a current Premier League player.
04:42Cardiff currently being in the Championship means that this claim and a number of the other clues dotted around the lyrics
04:47would all be basically made up for media attention, which undeniably is working.
04:52So who is D-Day? Well, he's a young man almost certainly from London and with ties to its southern boroughs,
04:57who raps about love, life and being a Premier League footballer.
05:01But it's worth keeping in mind though that Snoop Dogg often raps about being an actual dog, which is of course not the reality.
05:07Given the success he's enjoyed in such a short space of time though, fueled as much by his music as the speculation around it,
05:13it's debatable whether it's ever going to be beneficial for D-Day to unmask.
05:17The curiosity has gotten everyone's attention and, in music as much as in football,
05:21giving yourself the correct platform to play on is half the battle anyway.
05:25So watch this space, I guess.