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The best soap opera in the world

3rd April 2012 by Helena 6 Comments  

No, I am not going to drone on about Downton Abbey again. The best soap opera in the world is football. I am utterly addicted to the progress (or lack of it) of Chelsea Football Club. And not just the performances on the field. If David Luiz gets a haircut, it is big news in our household. Luiz you have to understand, does have the MOST amazing hair and also looks like a character from a Mantegna painting, but I digress.

In the Chelsea soap opera so far this year we have had: The great white hope manager, AVB, in some ways (nationality) reminiscent of the best manager the club ever had (Jose) and who even worked with Jose, a fact that elevated him to practically God-like status without doing anything else at all. Of course said manager turns out to be utterly useless, dragging the club through one of its worst periods ever. Then we have had the gorgeous striker who can’t score. Fernando Torres, bought for £50 milllion, making him the most expensive striker in the world, and unable to hit the back of the net. Another sub-plot has been the battle of the old guard; the backbone of the team, Lampard, Terry and Drogba, and their future. Are they too old? Too powerful? Clearly AVB thought so. But in the end, they see him off much to the delight of fans all over the world.

On the field we have three major plots; the premier league, the Champions League and the FA Cup.  For the Premier League, the question now is whether or not (because we cannot win it) we will even finish in the top four, meaning we can play in the Champions League next season. If we don’t “make it to Europe” as they call it, we lose clout when it comes to keeping and attracting top players, not to mention a lot of money. One option is to win the Champions League this year, which automatically qualifies us. But we have not even got to the semi-final yet (key game tomorrow) and if we do, we may face Barcelona. The FA Cup is the third plot-line. We face Tottenham (London arch rivals) in the semi-final. We have already booked our tickets to London in case we get to the final. That is one episode we need to see live.

The last episode was a joy to watch. We beat Aston Villa 4-2 and Torres ended a 24-hour Premier League goal drought by scoring. It was poetry. And incredibly dramatic. We were leading 2-0 before they equalised, then we scored twice in the last 15 minutes of the game. Tomorrow night we face Benfica in the quarter finals of the Champions League. We beat them 1-0 in the first leg so expectations are high.Then it’s the FA Cup semi-final.

There is no soap opera in the world that gives you the same levels of misery, joy, elation and frustration as following a football team does. The cast is a little bereft of female characters and there is little or no love interest (unless Ashley Cole gets back together with Cheryl), but you can’t have it all.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012


Filed Under: Chelsea FC, Sport, blog --> Tagged With: opera, world

6 thoughts on The best soap opera in the world

  • Jacques says:
    4th April 2012 at 11:10 am

    the last time Swindon Town was at the top of their league with Ardiles, there was a war in the Falklands. So beware!
    Jacques

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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