Chelsea Football Club arrived in Seattle yesterday for a series of branding & marketing exercises, we mean -- sorry -- pre-season friendlies. Tonight the Chels take on the mighty Seattle Sounders. And may the best team from west London win. This is invariably the prof's favorite part of the season: the anticipation of future triumphs (the League title again, that's all the professor of pop cares about), happy memories of attending pre-season games back in England with my family, the aimless thrill of reading transfer gossip first thing in the morning over tea & toast, the plotting & planning regarding who will get relegated, the sheer ecstacy of watching that Big Team Newcastle plummet down the divisions like an enormous bloated lump of gold bullion sinking into subprime quicksand, the annual triumph of hope over experience when we predict success for measure d's "team" S***s... and in recent years the tedious regularity of wondering if the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss, plus of course the eager anticipation of a vicious snarling cup tie against Reading, during the course of which that GBH intern Stephen Hunt will finally get his just desserts. (Is Ron Harris still on the books?)
Meantime Susan & and prof are roadtripping to LA on Monday at 5am for Tuesday night's game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena against Jose 'God' Mourinho's Inter-Milan. Rarely will you hear the Chels boys&grrls shower the oppo coach with such love. (You can read the road blog @ POP in the coming daze. [Or go here for 140-character twitdates.]
The prof will be wearing his 1970's yellow away shirt (NO LOGO), a very kind gift purchased from a thrift shore on Haight Street 10 years go by singer-songwriter-poet-novelist & (alas) Arsenal fan Mister John Wesley Harding.
Goodwin may also be wearing his NY Yankees baseball cap just to piss you off.
We will be staying at the Pasadena Hilton. We will be re-re-reading the best 3 footie books (Only A Game by Eamon Dunphy, a footballer, Steaming In by Colin Ward, a hooligan, & The Damned United by David Peace, a fan.)
See you in the bar.
GO CHELS!
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