Stuart Dallas joke flies straight over ITV journalist’s head
Northern Irish journalists John Laverty and Mark McFadden have seen a joke about Stuart Dallas’ nationality fly straight over their head after the Leeds United man was called up to international duty this week.
Earlier this season, we covered that BT Sport commentators were constantly saying that Dallas, 29, was born in Leeds. However, everyone at Leeds knows the Northern Ireland international as the Cookstown Cafu.
When Leeds announced Dallas’ Northern Ireland call-up on Twitter on Thursday, one Whites supporter joked about being “disappointed” the versatile left-back hadn’t chosen to represent England.
Of course, that joke failed to land across the Irish Sea as Belfast Telegraph journalist Laverty screenshotted and shared the tweet, leading to a response by ITV reporter McFadden.
He said on Twitter: “I’m not sure which is more irksome, Aram’s failure to undertake the simplest research or his inability to grasp grammar, punctuation and spelling.”
https://twitter.com/MarkMcFadden/status/1372863886362296322
Dallas for Brazil
It was a bit naive of the Northern Irish journalists to think that a Leeds fan didn’t know which country his team’s player played for – especially when Dallas has 52 caps for Northern Ireland.
But their mistake isn’t anywhere near as bad as the one BT Sport commentators kept making.
Had they not done a slight bit of research on Dallas? Had they not seen him play for Northern Ireland or heard his accent? It’s a far cry from a Leeds one.
Dallas has been superb for the Whites this season so it did him a bit of injustice for them to share wrong information to BT Sport viewers.
The ex-Brentford ace has made 28 appearances in the Premier League this season, scoring five goals and supplying two assists in the process.
He’s spent most of the season at left-back but has played and impressed in a central role lately due to injury issues in Marcelo Bielsa’s squad.
It remains to be seen where the versatile ace will play for Northern Ireland but it’s likely he’ll slot in on the left-hand side somewhere when they play Italy, the USA and Bulgaria in the coming weeks.
In other Leeds United news, Robin Koch has explained why he wasn’t called up by Germany.