Football Food For Thought / Dan Fitch / 05 January 2010 /

They said that it would never happen, but Dan 'The Betting Man' Fitch has watched Jamie Redknapp on TV and found the experience interesting. Redknapp stars in the new Sky One series Football's Next Star.

As regular readers of this column will know (hello Auntie), Jamie Redknapp is far from being my favourite football pundit.

I've nothing against Jamie personally. I always liked him as a player and his father has done wonders at my beloved Spurs. In fact, at one stage I was such a fan of Redknapp that I even owned a big pile of magazines featuring his wife in various states of undress.

It's just that in life, you have to find your niche and I'm not sure that punditry is Jamie's. Neither is advertising, if the recent commercials featuring Redknapp and his aforementioned wife are anything to go by.

I've been on a Thomas Cook holiday before and having gone through the experience, fail to believe that a wealthy ex-footballer and his pop star missus, would want to go on a break that involved being transported from the airport to hotel via coach, whilst being made to listen to the banalities of some clipboard-clutching holiday rep.

It's just not believable, but I was surprised to witness just how believable Redknapp was in his role on the new Sky One show Football's Next Star.

Sky's latest reality show is like the X-Factor for young footballers. Thousands of players compete against one another for the prize of a year's contract at Inter Milan, with Jamie taking on the Dermot role.

It's a position that he seems very comfortable in. The boys face off in a series of high pressured trial matches and Redknapp's just the man to give them advice and a shoulder to cry on. He's been in these sort of situations before and comes across as being genuinely empathetic towards their struggle.

As with any reality show, it featured a few oddballs who, spurred on by pushy parents, believe themselves to be far more talented than they actually are.

Falling into this category was Ashley, whose dad confidentially declared that his son would be as big as Ronaldo and would earn a similar amount of money. In actuality the footballer that Ashley most resembled was Paul Scharner, due to his very silly hairstyle. Predictably, the sinister looking Inter coaches gave him the boot.

The show also followed the Cowell format of holding various regional heats. This proved to be particularly insightful in Scotland, where the attendance was so low, that many of the young hopefuls thought that they'd turned up at Wigan v Hull.

It seems that young Scots are more interested in stuffing their face with deep fried pizzas, rather than playing football these days. The poor turnout gave an indication as to why Scotland has stopped out-punching its weight when it comes to producing footballers.

Eventually the boys were whittled down to the final ten that will go to Italy for next week's show. As with all reality shows, you kind of had an inkling as to who would be selected, based on the amount of airtime the producers gave to their particular 'journeys'.

The stand out performers in the first episode were an Irish lad with one leg longer than the other, Anthony Gardener's cousin, a Christian who resembles Glenn Hoddle in more ways than one, and a nifty looking striker who has probably been overlooked by Premier League scouts on the account that he wears glasses.

Of course, a more useful prize for the lads would have been a year's contract at somewhere like Rotherham, or anywhere else where they were likely to break into the first team.

Inter has been chosen so that Sky has some access to Jose Mourinho, but with his side available at just [1.3] to win another title, I wouldn't be backing any of these lads to be playing at the San Siro next season.

Having said that, I never thought that I would enjoy watching Jamie Redknapp on television. It's clear that anything is possible.

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