IF you’re not a Chelsea fan you may not have met the Premier League’s sexiest football supporter.
But Sophie Rose has been making waves on YouTube – and is now set for the small screen.
A season ticket holder at Chelsea, Sophie is one of the faces of CFC FanTV, the Blue alternative to Arsenal FanTV.
Fans channels have exploded in recent years with social media offering a voice to the person in the stands like never before.
Videos can rack up hundreds of thousands – even millions – of views, with the presenters and regular guests becoming stars in their own right.
Sophie told SunSport: “It’s crazy. When I first started it was not as big as they are now.
“You can’t really run a good channel anymore just doing weekend stuff, you have to be uploading content daily.
“I watch all the channels, I want to see what all the fans are thinking.
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“Whether you’re laughing at them, enjoying them or whatever.
“There’s not a lot of fan stuff out there [in other media], so it’s good for the fans to get a voice.”
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Sophie, who is originally from Devon and got the Chelsea bug from her dad, says the rise of fan channels comes from clubs putting restrictions on supporters.
“I sit in the Shed Upper and I’ll always remember this,” she says.
“A guy came and he had a mini trumpet, it was fun, and a steward told him ‘you can’t do that’.
“And grown men were going absolutely mental [that he couldn’t do it].
“You can’t stand up anymore, you can’t sing, you can’t swear.
“If you go to away games in Europe they have flares, banners – not that I want flares – but you’re allowed to do a lot more.
“You feel the atmosphere a lot more, whereas here a lot of that is taken away from the game.
“So after the game fans come to us and get to say whatever they want to.
“They can scream and shout, swear, they can go crazy. We don’t want people saying ‘you can’t say this, you can’t say that.'”
Sophie will have a part on new Channel 4 programme The Real Football Fan Show, which aired for the first time late on Thursday.
Robbie Lyle from Arsenal FanTV – who has attracted criticism from Hector Bellerin and Gary Neville – is leading the programme, which promises to be a “no holds barred” debate on all the latest news and debate from football.
“Robbie is presenting it, he asked me if I would do a segment,” she says.
“He wants a female presenter who knows football and goes to games.
“The thing that annoys me most is people think I’m just hired because I’m a woman.
“That’s really not the case.”
Sophie will be a roving reporter, out at different grounds meeting fans from different clubs.
“The whole thing about the show is giving fans a voice.”
So what about Chelsea?
After winning the title last season, the Blues were expected to compete again under Antonio Conte – instead the Italian has sulked through most of the campaign over the club’s transfer policy and will likely be sacked at the end of the season.
“It’s been a s*** season, it’s been crap,” she adds.
“You can’t force somebody to be somewhere if they don’t want to be there and he doesn’t really want to be there anymore. As much as I’d love to keep him.
“I want a manager to last at least five years, if we get rid of managers every couple of seasons we’re going to run out. There’s only so many to go around. There’s not that many good ones!”
Who would Sophie like to replace Conte when he goes?
“I really don’t have one. I don’t think [Juventus boss Max] Allegri would last.
“He looks a bit too timid for me, you want somebody fiery to have the Chelsea job.
“That’s why [Jose] Mourinho worked. That’s what you need at Chelsea.
“But you can win titles and still get sacked, it’s beyond me now.
“I prefer to see what the manager does when he comes in, at Chelsea it’s impossible to predict whether a manager is going to be good or not.
“Even if I became manager tomorrow, the system that the board have in place, the people above me will never change.
“So I’d be very limited with what I could do.
“Most people hated Conte for getting rid of [Diego] Costa, but I completely agreed that he should’ve gone, because he didn’t want to be there.
“So any players that wanted to leave I would let them go. I’m not a fan of sticking with [Alvaro] Morata every week just because he cost a lot of money.
“I would play [Olivier] Giroud, see if he’s a better alternative.
“I’d change the formation as many times as I needed to, I would mix players around.”
Despite the lacklustre recent form, Chelsea face a massive game on Sunday, facing Southampton again – this time at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final.
In what has been a depressing, lost season for the club, Chelsea could still walk away with a trophy at the end of it.
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“I’m never confident going into any game now,” says Sophie, “our team needs a complete rebuild and freshening up.
“We should win it. Southampton have had a terrible season, they will probably be relegated but they are definitely going to be up for it.
“I think Conte will just have to care a little bit more than he has done in the last few weeks.
” He’s going to have to put his differences with the club aside and try and put out a good team.
“A trophy is still a trophy. That’s the weird thing about this season, us fans feel like the season is already over even though we can still win a trophy.
“People are done with it, people have had enough.”
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