SOCCER fanatic Sam Prentki has found a lucrative way to pay his way through university - by being a body double for a famous footballer.

The 21-year-old Hampshire man raked in £3,000 for just six days work standing in for Manchester United hero Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Sam will appear in a Pepsi advert, released in March, which will display the skills and trickery of the Reds' hot striker.

It also features team mates David Beckham and Roy Keane and Juventus legends Edgar Davids and Michaelangelo Rampoula.

Sam was hired after replying to an advert posted at University College London, for people to work as body doubles for the professionals. He is a final year student reading geography at the college.

The muscle-packed limbs of Sam, who captains the university's football team, will be seen filling in for those of Solskjaer.

It meant the star didn't need to hang around filming endless takes - at least that was the plan.

Sam and his fellow stand-ins were surprised to see the Manchester United stars sometimes fluffing their tricks, while Davids needed just a couple of attempts to get his right.

The student, who is from Highfield in Southampton, said: "Davids was amazing, easily the best. He was doing tricks as soon as he walked in. I had never even seen some of them before.

"When he was performing for the camera he was doing some sort of step-over so fast I couldn't really see what he was doing."

While the Juventus dynamo received glowing praise, the same could not be said for United's midfield pairing.

"It took Roy Keane about a dozen attempts to catch a ball on the back of his neck," said Sam, a former pupil of Cantell School in Southampton and Peter Symonds' College in Winchester.

"They started off a bit ambitiously dropping the ball from about four feet, but eventually they had to drop it from about a foot and-a-half up before he could do it.

"It took David Beckham about six goes just to trap a ball, and even then he didn't get it right and they had to film even more takes."

Although Sam enjoyed the chance to pick up tips from some of the world's greatest footballers, he considers his acting career strictly a one-off for the time being.

But the place in the spotlight had its drawbacks as well. The devoted Saints fan had to wear a United shirt, a fact which he is still finding difficult to stomach.