The Inbetweeners actor James Buckley has been a Crystal Palace fan for years and even took the FA Cup trophy on tour with The Eagles after they won it last season
The Inbetweeners star James Buckley has hung up his football boots and slammed the modern Premier League for being “boring” and lacking “no characters”.
The 37-year-old actor, famed for his role as the cheeky Jay Cartwright in the hit Channel 4 series, was once a die-hard Crystal Palace supporter, confessing to being “obsessed” with The Eagles.
Yet, even after Palace’s historic FA Cup final victory over Manchester City last season, James has declared he’s had enough of the beautiful game, claiming it’s lost its charm for him.
On his podcast The Buckleys, he said: “I’m sort of turned off of football, to be honest. It’s become something that I don’t really enjoy, that I don’t really like.
“I think the product just isn’t good. The last few times I have sat down and watched a game, big matches between two big teams, it has been boring.
“There’s no people doing anything interesting, there’s no characters in sport no more. All these kids are media trained from the age of 11 years old and they’ve got no personality, or anything to say for themselves. It’s well boring.”
Now considering himself a “football refugee”, James and his missus Clair have switched their allegiance to American sports, getting hooked on ice hockey, particularly for the weekly on-ice rumbles.
He quipped: “I’m a sort of football refugee and I have turned to a lot of American sports. I do like sport; I do like following a team and I am missing my football fix every weekend.
“I’ve been watching a lot of NFL over the years, I do like a bit of basketball and I’ve gone ice hockey mad, we’ve got NHL TV in our house. I don’t know all the rules, but that’s not important, the players are trying to get the puck towards the other goal and then get it in the goal. That’s all you need to know about ice hockey and there’s a fight, there’s a little scrap, which is super exciting.”
James, known for his role as Jay in The Inbetweeners, humorously boasted on the show that he’d “took Woking from the Conference to the Champions League in six seasons” and was offered a job in the “England set-up” because of his virtual management skills.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
