³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

so why cant you get to the players before and after the games?

Nice enough guy and all that but as anybody that knew him in his youth will tell you he's not a football fan

He looks more of a Burger King fan, maybe he should support Getafe, have you seen their new kit?!

Try as I might, I can't find any footage of him invading the pitch last night. Perhaps he was still buying a pre-match pie...

Nice enough guy and all that but as anybody that knew him in his youth will tell you he's not a football fan
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First off, you can't make comments like that without explaining what you mean. Second off, I was a Rugby fanatic until a few years ago. I had absolutely no time for football. Thankfully I've seen the error of my ways, and couldn't miss a match now. The point is people change.

The guy writing this blog is really bad at it. Is this for a C³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsround 'press-pack' thingy?

"It's always nice to hear from a footballer, especially if they are articulate"

Or even if they're not presumably?

Please no, there are few things duller than listening to current or ex-footballers speak, I wish broadcasters would drop this starstruck obession with people just because they are famous, it's a sickness.

There are a handful of people in football who can talk like Mourinho, Wenger or Ferguson (oh well) otherwise I'd much rather hear from an articulate fan, intelligent journalist or anyone but people who are only on just because they're a celebrity.

Scotlands12thMan, the previous poster's right, not you. Yes, people change, but that doesn't mean you can ignore their pasts. If you've only been following football for a few years (particularly after being an egg-chaser) you won't be a proper football fan until Scotland win the World Cup...

I thought it was Kenny Dalglish who said "velocity" after being asked for a 'quick word.'

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Rabster it was definately Strachan.... I used to love his post match interviews when GS was at the Saints, The prem needs characters like that a little arrogance goes a long way.... Jose Mourinho too.... far too many boring Managers... Moyes and Hughes have about as much personality as a house plant... Hopefully Ancelotti will be like Ranieri in the interview room he was hilarious!

This is nothing more than a love in with a C list celebrity...

if you love him so much then can i recommend that you get a room... and stop writing love poems about him thinly disguised as a blog on football.

ps - my last comment was removed that said pretty much the same .... hopefully the moderator will allow this one through as this is a genuine opinion of mine specifically about the content of this blog... it is not offensive to anyone nor do i believe it breaks house rules.

5. At 8:07pm on 26 Aug 2009, Scotlands12thMan wrote:
Nice enough guy and all that but as anybody that knew him in his youth will tell you he's not a football fan
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First off, you can't make comments like that without explaining what you mean. Second off, I was a Rugby fanatic until a few years ago. I had absolutely no time for football. Thankfully I've seen the error of my ways, and couldn't miss a match now. The point is people change.
--

Well I mean that it's not in his blood so to speak - at school he was very much focused on his acting and not interested in football. And fair play it's proven a very good decision... but his passion is acting/performance art. He's not a proper football fan by any stretch.

It's not in your blood either and your late arrival on the football scene means you will never 'understand' a game like I do after spending my youth playing the game and watching as much as I could. They were development phases you missed out on.

Pretty poor blog, and i agree with #6 reads like a newsround article.

Still beats Horne and Corden though.

Enjoyed his Comic Relief sketch, and look forward to his sports relief one if it is as good as you say (though fear it will be identikit).

I didn't actually learn anything from this, were any questions asked at all? There was a lot of scope... (In the video Corden comes across as a bit sub-gervais if you get what i mean.)

Anyway, don't take it as personal keep going, i just didn't like this particular blog and if i do enjoy blogs i rarely comment... I enjoy your presenting.

Curlyfries. I've got to admit, i don't agree with what you've said at all. There is no hierachy of football fan as such. Either you follow it, or you don't. Also the blog did say that it wasn't until his teenage years that he got involved with West Ham. Just because he's a late starter, doesn't make him any less of a fan than anybody else. It annoys me when people say "I've been a football fan longer, therefore I'm a bigger/better fan than you are". I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree with it at all. Just for the record, I've been a Saints fan since I was 7.

For me they'll never truly understand it. At school my life was football at break and lunch, after school was football on the green, summer holidays football at the Rec - everything football. Love it. Always have. Always will. For me it's different to somebody that starts watching in their teens.

The quote wrongly attributed to both Mr Strachan and Mr Dalglish was in fact from one of Mr Strachans colleagues at both Aberdeen and Manchester United, One Mr Martin Buchan. To my knowledge Mr Dalglish doesnt have a four syllable word in his vocabulary.

Apparently all the trouble kicked off the other night after the West Ham and Millwall fans heard there was going to be another series of Horne and Corden!

What an absolutely pointless exercise this blog is. Not only does 'Dan the Man' have the journalistic acumen of a frozen trout, his sycophantic sucking up to the utterly talentless James Corden (one of the most offensive/least funny/fattest people on the planet), frankly makes me want to wretch. Of what relevance to us as football fans is Danny Boy telling us that James Corden is a 'real football fan'??? I couldn't care less. Why not dedicate this blog to interesting stories from leagues we might not know too much about? Lower leagues? Europe?

Good work by Corden's agent though, he's the real winner. Anyone have his number? I quite fancy being famous...

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

@15

I completely agree with you. I've been an avid fan since the age of 6 (see if you can guess which team), no less of a fan than CurlyFries professes to be in comment 16, but I fully accept anyone who finds themselves following football at any stage of their life. For example, it would be the greatest day of my life if my fiancee could suddenly find the same passion for the game as me, even at 23 years old - but there's not much chance of that happening!

I agree with the majority of posters that this is only slightly football-related, but I welcome Dan's blogs fully. I look forward to the next one - his first was a fantastic insight in to what goes on behind the scenes at the beeb.

@19 charliewarren25

I suspect you are merely "trolling", but I will bite nonetheless. Of what relevance is James Corden's size here? How could there possibly be any relevance? You might as well complain about Adebayor being one of the darkest-skinned footballers, bigot. (By the way, I am a white male aged 18-40, 6'1 and 11 stone. Try targeting me as a minority! And yes, I know prejudism against fat people is not as serious as racism, but there just isn't any point. I think everything that Corden has done on the telly is awful - especially Gavin and Stacey - but from what I see of him, I do really like the guy).

Ignoring the whole content and opinions of the article for a second and all that malarky - but...

WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THAT SHIRT!???

Seriously Dan, did you get dressed in the dark that morning or something!?? Lol

UP THE BLADES!!

#19 Brilliant....personally I don't read many of these blogs but I read the coments for comedy value.....had me in stitches and couldn't agree more.

#21 Calm down about charliewarren25's comments....it was a joke and seeing how part of his license fee goes towards paying for these blogs I'd say he's allowed an opinion. Besides, he didn't say anyhting against fat people, he just said James Corden is fat, which really, you can't argue with.

My personal point of view, another pointless blog about nothing to do with footie, just Dan the Man walker showing off about a job it seems he enjoys, which is fair enough, we'd all do it!! Wish I had a job where I get to talk and write about footie all day long, but then I'd have to meet James Corden, who seems like a nice enough bloke, I just think he's over-rated as a comedian. The only good thing he did was the comic relief sketch and the best part about that was watching Crouchy pulling the rope terrible after he scored a goal.....priceless!! Lets all take this a little less seriously shall we, no ones important is gonna take much notice anyways....

To be honest calling David Moyes Davey Moyes isn't really a big deal. It's not because Strachan is best pals with Moyes it's because in Scotland if your called David you get called Davey. Bit of a non-point to be honest.

CurlyFriesFan actually invented football, so can we all just listen to him please.

James Corden comes across as a likeable lad. He's gently amusing prime-time fodder who i have absolutely no interest in watching. Justin Lee Collins is barely amusing prime-time fodder who seems to be on telly solely because of his wurzle accent and hair. Neither of them would induce me to watch the festival of blandness that is Football Focus.

... and Chris Evans seamlessly passes on the celeb 'soccer' baton...

Pass the Pringles!

Unfunny man with something to plug and who is obsessed with being on TV gets a spurious opportunity to be on TV ('impossible to track down'!! Are you serious? He's hardly the Dalai Lama for flip's sake). ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ person tries to justify this pointless piece of brown nosing by claiming he's a proper 'footy' fan, convinces no one. Pointless exercise all round.

Oh, and why is James Corden doing a David Brent impression on this clip?

Great blog Dan!
I found it both amusing and interesting.

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#25
I was going to mention the david/davey thing too. I can't think of one person I knew/know back home who was called David and not Davey.

Gervais yeah? Oooh..that's..embarassing 'n that. Yeah? Hmmm? Oh? What? Against karate? Yeah? Hmmm i prefer a flan!

Curlyfries # 13 and 16

I get where he is coming from. Living and breathing it as a child and the bonding between father and son and a young boy and his school/street mates through watching, playing, talking, learning, fantasizing and generally obsessing about it every minute of every waking hour is a different kind of "appreciation" than one might get in later life.
In the same way that someone might find the 2003 mature series of He-man cartoon good entertainment (which it was) it will not be cherished and understood quite the same as it is by all the kids who ran home from school to watch the original 80's show.

Just got round to reading the comments on this blog. Seems to me that some people can be staggeringly self-righteous about both comedy and football - we only need music to complete the set. It comes across as nothing more than playa-hating, to be brutally honest.

It's clear that James Corden, even having committed the cardinal sin of ONLY GETTING INTO FOOTBALL IN HIS TEENS, is knowledgeable, committed, but more importantly LOVES this game as much of those of us who were born with a football rattle in one hand and a season ticket in the other. It's inverted snobbery of the highest order to write him off as some sort of 'celeb fan' when he's patently been obsessed with footy since long before he got so much as a sniff of fame.

And as for the ridiculous suggestion that FF and/or Dan are pandering to his need for attention - please. That piece was light-hearted, interesting and mildly funny, which (a short piece on Scotland World Cup qualifying campaigns aside) is as much as we ever have a right to expect from Saturday lunchtime TV. As Dan says, neither FF or the blog are meant to be the cutting edge of football journalism - for me it sits perfectly between the moronic-but-amusing shenanigans of Soccer AM and the dry, worthy tactical panel discussions of old. The piece with Corden certainly spoke to me of the experience of becoming a football fan in the true sense, of discovering the all-encompassing joy of just BEING in your club's ground and sharing the experience with 30,000 others. Corden still clearly has that childlike glee at merely stepping foot inside the Boleyn Ground - something that I can still certainly identify with even after twenty-plus years of going to Hillsborough.

This is in danger of becoming an essay, so I 'll sign off now - but I for one would only change one thing about FF - the DISGRACEFUL shirts. Sort it out, Dan!

"I was expecting to meet a really arrogant, famous bloke, a "celebrity" fan who had been told to start going to football matches by his agent. What I found was a thoroughly friendly, very normal lad..."

And the very next paragraph -

"We were told by the club that we could go anywhere - apart from the dressing rooms. I did explain this to Mr Corden, who walked straight through reception... and into the dressing rooms."

Isn't such behaviour exactly what you'd expect from a really arrogant, famous bloke?