Football is full of comedy. Comedy misses, comedy goals, comedy tackles, comedy rants. And that's before we delve into bubbling furnace that is football memes. But before that we had football sketches. The likes of Apres Match, Harry Enfield and Mitchell & Webb tickled our funny bones with their wry takes on footie culture.
With that in mind, here are the nine greatest football sketches of all time.
9. Mitchell and Webb - Football Fan
This sketch by David Mitchell and Robert Webb perfectly encapsulates the childish partisan nature of football fans.
Best bit: "I'm not really into football as I said last time you suddenly remembered you were a massive Liverpool fan 20 seconds after they'd won the European cup".
8. Harry Enfield & Chums - Julio Geordio
Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse have created many fantastic football sketches over their illustrious career and Julio Geordio is a perfect example of the pair skewing the clash of cultures that comes about when an exotic signing signs for a less than exotic club.
Best bit: *pseudo-Colombian gibberish*-stuck me toe out and it went in!
7. Monty Python - Philosophers Football
A list about football sketches would not be complete without a nod to Monty Python's brilliant football philosophers.
Best bit:
Socrates scores, got a beautiful cross from Archimedes. The Germans are disputing it.
Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.
6. Alan Partridge - Football Commentary
One of Alan Partridge's first outings was on the Armando Ianucci's news parody show 'The Day Today' where he cast his eye over the world of sport. This skit where Partridge commentates over World Cup goals is endlessly quotable.
Best bit: Eat that...and another!!!
5. Harry & Paul - Football Manager
Paul Whitehouse shows his dumbfounding range of accents in this great sketch about multilingual dressing rooms.
Best bit: "Wing Mickey, how now so you are now wing Mickey so you are are you not?"
4. Apres Match - NI Sports Results
Something about Risteard Coopers' dour whistle laden reading of the football scores is genius.
Best bit: ...CIYMS were taking on NIFC in the CDP sponsored TSB League, CIYMS going onto shade that one by a consonant.
3. Harry Enfield - Association Football
Best bit: "And there's the captain, Charles Charlie Charles, one of the famous Charles brothers".
2. Risteard Cooper - MOTD Spoof
Risteard Cooper stuck out on his own for this Betdaq sponsored sketch and the Apres Match man gets all three stars of BBC's Match Of The Day down to a tee... arguably.
Best bit: Alan Hansen - "The thing about Rio Ferdinand is that he's quick, he's fast... and he's got pace."
1. That Mitchell & Webb Look - Watch The Football!
Though the sketch was released in 2008 it arguably (Gary) has more resonance now than when it was first released. Basically it's Sky Sports in a nutshell.
Best bit: Watch the football, it's gonna mooove!
