Eyes on the Ballers Welcome to the future of football, where the ability to entertain is king

The first ever goal in the UK version of the Baller League is scored by the influencer PK Humble, just in case you ever find yourself taking part in a pub quiz in 2045.

- Jonathan Liew

Humble – a midfielder for Hashtag United and star of the recent YouTube series Inside – takes the ball out of defence, advances it at a frankly embarrassingly leaden pace and side-foots it past a goalkeeper who should really do better.

Welcome to the future of football. It’s faster, better and more exciting than the real thing. Albeit not faster in a strictly physical sense, or better in a strictly technical sense, or more exciting in the sense that you actually need to care about who wins. But it is, nonetheless, all of these things. Why? Because we said so. And don’t just take our word for it. Maya Jama says so too.

Look, I’m going to take a wild swing here: you’re probably not the target audience for Baller League. You probably don’t even care that a new influencer-driven football league was launched in London last week with celebrity managers and a player roster including Henri Lansbury, Marvin Sordell, Adrian Mariappa and Jordon Ibe. You probably have recycling to sort or something.