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MarshallCavendish - Mihir Bose

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246 pages

English

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The Premier League is immensely successful, a true worldwide success of the kind not enjoyed by any other English product. Such is the dominance of the Premier League that people have changed their sleeping habits on match days around the world. This fascinating book charts the rise of the Premier League. Few of its founders saw it as a worldwide phenomenon, but the power of TV media, the wider changes in Europe and influx of rich men's money (led by Roman Abramovich) propelled the Premier League into a class of its own. Yet, the Premier League's rise was a spectacular cocktail of events, few of which were properly anticipated let alone planned for. Without any safeguards as to how clubs are governed, or how English football is protected from predators, we are now witnessing a financial crisis of such dimensions that the game may be forced to change in order to survive. Mihir Bose, the UK's leading sports/business journalist, takes us on a mesmerizing journey involving high stakes, multi-billion pound deals, powerful and rich people, and the future of the beautiful game.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	MarshallCavendish
Date de parution	01 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814398985
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0600€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover design: Cover Kitchen
Copyright 2012 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd Published in 2012 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196 genrefsales@sg.marshallcavendish.com www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
Other Marshall Cavendish offices: Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12 th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd. Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang HiTech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited.
The right of Mihir Bose to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher. The author and publisher have used their best efforts in preparing this book and disclaim liability arising directly and indirectly from the use and application of this book. All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain necessary copyright permissions. Any omissions or errors are unintentional and will, if brought to the attention of the publisher, be corrected in future printings.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978 981 4398 98 5
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Limited, Padstow, Cornwall
CONTENTS
Introduction - The English are back
PART 1 - Phoenix from the ashes
Chapter 1 - The vanishing crowds
Chapter 2 - The Iron Lady s terrifying game
Chapter 3 - Money for Carlos Kickaball
PART 2 - Change from near and far
Chapter 4 - The other Scotsman
Chapter 5 - The unexpected European twist
PART 3 - Three men and their ball games
Chapter 6 - The ultimate modern manager
Chapter 7 - Some foreign lessons
Chapter 8 - Tackling home failings
PART 4 - Money and the brand
Chapter 9 - The people s game, a rich man s toy
Chapter 10 - The global search for an English brand
Chapter 11 - The new money castes
PART 5 - Football s secret world
Chapter 12 - The ghostly presence
Chapter 13 - Global football and the fixers
Conclusion - The problems of success
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Appendix
About the Author
OTHER BOOKS BY MIHIR BOSE

Football
The World Cup: All You Need to Know
Manchester DisUnited: Trouble and Takeover at the World s Richest Football Club
Manchester Unlimited: The Money, Egos and Infighting Behind the World s Richest Soccer Club
Manchester Unlimited: The Rise and Rise of the World s Premier Football Club
Behind Closed Doors: Dreams and Nightmares at Spurs
Cricket
The Magic of Indian Cricket
A Maidan View - The Magic of Indian Cricket
A History of Indian Cricket
Cricket Voices
All in a Day: Great Moments in Cup Cricket
Keith Miller: A Cricketing Biography
General Sports
The Spirit of the Game
Sports Babylon
Sporting Colours: Sport and Politics in South Africa
The Sporting Alien
History and Biography
Bollywood - A History
Raj, Secrets, Revolution: A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose
The Memons
False Messiah: The Life and Times of Terry Venables
The Aga Khans
Michael Grade: Screening the Image
The Lost Hero
Business
How to Invest in a Bear Market
Fraud - the Growth Industry of the 1980s
The Crash: the 1987-88 World Market Slump
Crash! A New Money Crisis: a Children s Guide to Money
Insurance: Are You Covered?
To Igal Yawetz and Keith Perry for many wonderful football moments and for being such true friends.
Introduction
THE ENGLISH ARE BACK
It is the summer of 2009. A sweltering day in Singapore. Crowds have gathered in the city state to welcome a football team. But this is not a local team. This is Liverpool - a team from Singapore s former colonial masters.
The 2009-10 Premier League season is about to start. Liverpool are on their pre-season tour and the crowds thronging the Padang, a former cricket ground, and other venues in the city look as if they are welcoming a team of conquering heroes. At one stage during the ceremonial parade the players take a ride on a boat. Crowds lean over bridges and walls on either side of Marina Bay, Boat Quay and Clarke Quay to shout out the names of their favourite players. Very few of the squad are from Liverpool, indeed few are even qualified to play for England, representing as they do many other nations from around the world. As these players are mobbed by a largely Asian crowd of Chinese origin, they demonstrate the appeal of modern international sport and its ability to bring people together.
What makes the delirium of this welcome extraordinary is that Liverpool have not come to Singapore as champions of England, let alone Europe. Their past glories are receding into history as they are going through a barren spell, having won no trophies the previous season. Many of the people gathered on every available balcony and vantage point have never been to England, let alone Liverpool. But they know everything about the team, the songs, the chants of their supporters, their history. And like all true Liverpool fans they hate Manchester United with a passion, they even sing anti-United songs, although that is another city that perhaps remains forever foreign to them.
The crowd here includes Muslim women. As I mingle among them they tell me of their love for Liverpool and how they identify with the players. But once they notice I have a cameraman in tow they suddenly become reluctant to talk, lest their parents find out. Off camera, however, they are more than happy to reveal their intimate knowledge of the club from Anfield.
As I walk around Singapore, it is soon evident that for the people of this island this love extends beyond Liverpool to all of English football. Almost all the major clubs have their followers. Indeed there is almost an obsession with the Premier League. Some have even changed their sleeping habits on match days just to be able to watch the games live on television. Singapore is eight hours ahead of the UK, so on Premier League match days people go to bed around 7pm and get up around 4am to follow the evening match being broadcast live from England.
Mayur Bhanji, football producer for World Sports Group, who grew up in Leicester and now lives in Singapore, reflects:
Liverpool has one of the biggest fan bases with two clubs. It is a very tribal following. The Singapore fans of Liverpool passionately hate Manchester United and vice versa. For big matches like Carling Cup finals a thousand of them will gather and watch it on giant screens. For big tournaments people will even change their working habits to take in the coverage from Europe. So for Euro 2012 people started working at five in the evening, finishing well past midnight so that they could take in the 7.45pm kick-off at the Euros. All the major English clubs have targeted these fans and Chelsea have been particularly active trying to target disillusioned fans of other clubs who are not doing so well. These fans follow success and do switch loyalties.
Now take a three-hour flight west to Kolkata and come into the city centre by metro.
Kolkata, if not quite Kipling s packed and pestilential town , is as dirty, smog-ridden and clogged with traffic as ever. Although built by the British Raj, and once the capital of British India and the second city of the Empire, those imperial days have long gone. The city venerates those who fought the Raj for India s freedom. Opposite the memorial left behind by the British to honour the dead of two world wars is a statue of a man who in his desire to see a free India allied himself with the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War.
The city is part of a state that for more than 30 years from 1977 to 2012 was ruled by hardline Indian communists. It is a city where strikes can shut the whole city down for days, an activity the locals call bandh. It means stop and it literally stops everything in the city. Every political demonstration involves liberal displays of the red flag.
But the metro station is an oasis in this city of decay, filth and turbulence. For a start it is spotlessly clean. What is more, it also advertises England s Premier League. The video screens on the platforms are showing the matches played the previous night. As the crowds gather to wait for the next train they look up at the screens and exchange knowledgeable gossip about the two English teams locked in passionate combat. Some of them are supporters of the teams, and a few even wear T-shirts of Premier League teams. As passengers leave the metro, vendors with merchandise of various English clubs approach them hoping to strike a deal.
The Premier League is well aware of its global reach. At grounds like Stamford Bridge or the Emirates advertisements, signs and messages from Korea, Japan and Singapore are common. Towards the end of the 2011-12 season as Arsenal and Manchester City warmed up on the Emirates pitch, both sets of players wore T-shirts advertising a match between the two teams in Beijing s Bird s Nest National Stadium on the opening day of the Olympics Games in London. It was meant to demonstrate that while the Olympics was coming to the British capital for a record third time, English football was going global.
The Indian Premier League, the richest tournament in cricket, was modelled on the English Premier League. And in the summer of 2011, flat horseracing, keen to arrest its decline, concluded after extensive research that it needed to model its season on the Premier League, including a Cha