Premier League AllStars

From Frikipedia

A few years back, there was a Budweiser advert doing the rounds celebrating the beverage becoming the "official beer of the Premier League". Said advert gently poked fun at the prospect of the American nation exerting it's power on transforming the beautiful game. Oh how we laughed, as the ad garbled its way through the introduction of crazy franchises, soppy-faced cheerleaders and kerazy rule-changes like "added time multi-ball". What a bunch of silly Americanisms they are, we said. Good job that would never be allowed to happen. Added time multi-ball indeed.

But hang on a Yankee-bashing minute. We've only gone and blissfully gaudied up football all by ourselves. It's called "Premier League AllStars", and it's the latest attempt by Sky to keep attention away from the fact that some other channel nicked some of their football rights for this season. And it's awful. There's a plastic pitch, a truly mental-looking mish-mash of flashing lights, brain-dead cheering fans, ridiculous new rules and gizmos, and yes, even added time multi-ball. Of sorts.

The Format

The added rules include:

• The Drop - The games are started by a football being dropped out of some sort of pipe suspended high above the centre of the pitch. And Friki really really wishes it was joking about all of that.
• Powerplay - ADDED TIME MULTI BALL. Sort of. For the last minute of each half, the goalposts light up, some dreadful dance music pumps out of some speakers somewhere and all of a sudden, each goal counts as two goals. Which is a rule that manages to become stupider the longer you actually think about it.
• The Cooler - Essentially a small perspex touchline shelter which players who are sent off have to go and sit in to "cool off" for a bit before being allowed back on. Basically just the sin-bin idea with a sillier name.

The Show

Presented by former Arsenal legend Ian Wright, who claps and shouts his way through the task like the tactless simpleton he is, and by Soccer AM's Helen Chamberlain, who looks genuinely embarrassed to be here, and wishing that she could go back to doing the post-match interviews in the darts.

Each current Premier League team is represented in the AllStars knock-out cup. Though how they will pare 20 teams down to 2 using a simple knock-out format is unclear. The 10 man squads contain four grizzled, balding and rather portly ex-players, three "celebrity" fans (though there has really never been a more tenuous use of the word celebrity than that) and three normal blokes from the street, who have been plucked from obscurity for the chance to "lead their team to glory" by winning an overblown five-a-side tournament with the help of random former Big Brother contestants and Clayton Blackmore.

Friki Verdict

Worryingly, Wright and Chamberlain spent much of the opening show droning on about how this was football "of the future". Given the amount of influence Sky exerts over the Premier League these days, this cannot be simply dismissed as an idle threat.

Friki is now committed to watching as much football as it can before Mr Murdoch completely messes the whole concept up and Friki is forced to turn to rugby instead.