Phil Daniels' Football Match Day Madness

There certainly couldn't be a more targeted Stocking Filler DVD this year than this collection of footballing "moments", all presented by everyone's favourite cockney geezer. Yet there won't be a bigger contender for January's most popular DVD on eBay as the rewatch value of this rushed released is precisely nil.

Looking for yet another new way to string together a collection of footballing clips, the folks of Fremantle Media obviously had a slow Friday afternoon one day back in the summer as they decided to present the show from the point of view of the "typical match day". So we open with Phil waiting for his "mates" (cobbled together from a low-rent extras agency) to listen to the wizened punditry of a fictitious radio station (with the host "Billy Balls") as they present a series of unconnected clips.

There's all the old favourites here, but the discussions of who the best current strikers are (Ronaldo or Torres?) is hardly penetrating and a sequence of "comedy commentators" is limited to over-animated pundits from foreign climes being lampooned, yet the obtrusive geezer guitars played constantly as an underscore means you can barely hear any of it and there's hardly any mileage in showing what a "legendary" football player George Best was as he runs rings round the American soccer league with his career closing stint with the San Jose Earthquakes.

The filler becomes ever more apparent:

Random Friend #1: "Who do you think the best team is?"
Random Friend #2: "Foreign or domestic?"
Phil: "Now they are arguing who the best team is!"

Thanks Phil, I was a bit confused back there for a moment.

Replete with the typical gaffes and own goals that have been ever present in collections such as this, the "football man in your life" wouldn't be any the wiser if this DVD was just replaced with last year's Alistair McGowan collection of clips.A three minute section of Leeds passing the ball around a hapless Southampton to no effect is straight out of The Simpsons' bore-inducing "nil all" draw start to the episode 'The Cartridge Family' and for the £20 price tag asked of for this release you can buy that entire classic season.

Released on DVD on 1st December 2008 by Fremantle Home Entertainment.

Written by Simon Cole.