Premier League Betting: Rooney's Street Striker is pedestrian

Football Food For Thought / Dan Fitch / 10 November 2009 / 1 Comments

Rooney may well win the Ballon d'Or one day, but he's unlikely to ever win a TV Quick award.

For those who haven’t seen it, the show involves a gaggle of youngsters competing to become the best street footballer in the country. It’s a flawed concept because you never see kids playing football in the streets these days. Well, not unless it’s Pro Evo on their PSP.

Dan 'The Betting Man' Fitch thinks that Wayne Rooney looks a lot more confident on the pitch than he does in front of the cameras, as the new series of Street Striker launches on Sky.

Anyone watching Sky Sports' coverage of the Chelsea v Manchester United game, would have seen the numerous adverts for the new series of Wayne Rooney's Street Striker. As the show started just minutes after the end of United defeat, I'd imagine there were plenty of people turning over to avoid the replays.

The show is broadcast on Sky1 and Sky 1 HD, but you might want to eschew the latter option considering the amount of teenage acne on display.

When Street Striker first aired last year, I wrote about how ill suited Rooney seemed to the task of fronting a TV show. Twelve months later and Wayne still has the shifty look of a ne'er do well caught on CCTV. Well, you can take the boy out of Liverpool...

To be fair to Rooney, the young contestants obviously idolise him and now that he's put the granny shagging behind him, he's a decent role model. There's certainly worse people that Sky could have hired. Marlon King's Street Strike-Her anyone?

For those who haven't seen it, the show involves a gaggle of youngsters competing to become the best street footballer in the country. It's a flawed concept because you never see kids playing football in the streets these days. Well, not unless it's Pro Evo on their PSP.

The droning voice of the narrator made an effort to drill into us that Rooney leant his trade on the streets, completely ignoring the fact that he was signed to Everton by the age of ten. I doubt the famous School of Science were teaching their players to dribble balls round traffic lights.

The motley crew of young hopefuls are aged between ten and eighteen and clad head to toe in ASBO chic. If you were a shopkeeper you wouldn't let two of these of these lot come in together at the same time, but they actually all seemed to be nice enough kids.

In order to progress past the first round, the 24 contestants had to control a series of balls dropped from a block of flats and boot them into a skip. You could tell it was being filmed on a closed set, as the skip wasn't completely surrounded by fly tippers.

Some of the kids showed brilliant skill, while others should clearly stick to mugging old ladies. Once they were all done, it was time for Rooney and co-host Andy Ansah to give it a go.

Ansah makes his living as a football choreographer for films and television. He's clearly better at directing people than playing himself, as he showed a complete lack of touch. It was a bit like what I'd expect to see if they made Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell sing on the X-Factor.

Rooney was obviously a lot better. In fact his control was so deft that it really illustrated just how talented the top players are. That is until he tried to control the final ball dropped from the seventh floor of the building and made a real hash of it. I guess that rules out a transfer to Stoke.

The grand prize for the winner of the show is a trip to the World Cup final. I guess that the implication is that the victor will get to see Rooney playing there.

The truth is that despite the fact that England are just [7.8] to win the World Cup, there's probably just as much chance of seeing Andy Ansah play in the final.

Sky are trying to sell the idea that football in England is played in the street. Perhaps that explains why it's so often pedestrian.

Comments (1)

1. Gareth | 11 November 2009

   I think you're far too overly critical. Firstly, Rooney was made the face of the show because of the ability he has as a Footballer, not his persona. It's glaringly apparent that the programme is targeted at a young audience.... The age range of the kids in the competition makes that obvious. With that said, I don't really know what you are expecting of him? It's not as if he is presenting the show- He is there to give some advice and give his judgement as to whether he feels they are good enough to advance. The fact is, he does what is asked of him. I fail to see how anyone can find fault in what he does, considering that the format of the show is to not make it all about him. The purpose is finding the most skilled player- so I think rather than being scathing, you need to realise that he does exactly what is required of him.