I’ve talked on Sick Chirpse before about how Ryan Babel is a complete weirdo and his actions make no sense (who can forget Ryan Babel goes to twitterjail? Or more recently Ryan Babel vs Spongebob Squarepants) but he’s really outdone himself with the most recent video that he has posted on his official YouTube channel. Yeah, I was wondering why Ryan Babel would need an official YouTube channel as well but it’s beyond me. Does anyone have any ideas why a professional footballer needs a YouTube channel, especially when he just sticks up ridiculous videos of him going shopping in Asda on it?

It’s not even like his shopping trip is that entertaining, it’s just completely weird. You follow Ryan Babel – who was back in Liverpool to watch the Liverpool Newcastle match – into Asda, where he explains to the camera that he’s going shopping in Asda and it’s open 24 hours. This is already clear to anyone watching the video though due to the 30 second long establishing shot of someone (probably Ryan Babel himself) walking towards Asda and the huge ‘open 24 hours’ sign right next to the huge Asda sign.

Once inside, Ryan Babel searches desperately for the juice section – ‘ it’s been a while since I’ve been here, I think they’ve changed everything around’ – and then instead of buying juice puts a couple of bottles of coke in his trolley instead. He then examines a new CD – which unfortunately we can’t see – whilst a bunch of Liverpool fans walk past him pretending they know him and one even takes a photo of him with his camera phone. And that’s it. That’s a wrap. Ryan Babel’s shopping trip is over.

There’s nothing special about this video. In fact it’s really crap. But I’m fascinated by Ryan Babel’s behaviour – he seems to be using every form of social media available to him in order to…..I’m not really sure?! Like what is he trying to accomplish? He’s already a fairly famous footballer, what is uploading a video of him going shopping in Asda going to achieve for him!?

My guess would be that he wants the public to love him for his wacky exploits the same way that they’ve fallen in love with Mario Balotelli, but the thing is Balotelli is way better at football than Ryan Babel and also gets into situations that are actually really funny – remember the bib incident? – rather than just plain weird. More importantly and what also makes Balotelli infinitely cooler than Ryan Babel is that Balotelli doesn’t seem to go looking for any of the dumb stuff that happens – he isn’t on twitter or any other social networking sites as far as I can tell – yet it still manages to get reported in the national press because it’s so stupid and funny. Barely anyone is going to hear about Ryan Babel’s trip to Asda, except Sick Chirpse readers. So yeah, in conclusion Ryan Babel needs to take some tips from the biggest joker of them all Mario Balotelli – probably both on and off the field – and be a little less weird if he wants his social media career (and arguably his footballing career too) to get off the ground

You can check out Ryan Babel going shopping in Asda right here:

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