Be Careful What You Wish For

Description

Ever dreamed of owning your boyhood football club? Simon Jordan grew up a stone's throw from Crystal Palace Football Club. As a boy he used to break into the Palace ground for a kick-about on the hallowed turf. On leaving school he entered the mobile phone business. By the age of thirty-two, he'd built a company from nothing, sold it for GBP75 million and bought his childhood club. By the age of forty-two Palace was in administration and Jordan had lost nigh on everything. "Be Careful What You Wish For" lifts the lid on the owner's story and reveals for the first time how the national game really works. Jordan spares no one, least of all himself, as he takes us inside a world where hopes and aspirations sit alongside greed, self-interest, overpriced players, dodgy transfers and top-level incompetence. He doesn't hold back. Breathtakingly honest, highly controversial, humorous and full of jaw-dropping anecdotes, "Be Careful What You Wish For" is far more than a football book. It is a social commentary on the culture of great wealth and ambition; a Shakespearean tragedy that exposes the dark side of chasing a dream.

Promotion info

An explosive insight into the previously unseen world of football club ownership by one of the game's most-recognisable figures

Reviews

A frank and brutal insight into why football and business don't mix -- Theo Paphitis One hell of a read Sport Magazine Bad luck and bad decisions make for a page-turning read Shortlist magazine Brash, flash and full of bottle-blond ambition -- Simon Redfern Independent on Sunday One of the best football books you will ever read Birmingham Post

Author description

Simon Jordan is a serial entrepreneur who made his fortune in the mobile phone industry. He started the Pocket Phone Shop in 1994 expanding it to over 200 outlets by the time of its sale in 2000. In the same year he bought Crystal Palace Football Club, becoming the youngest ever owner of a Football League club. During his ten years in football covering the entire decade of the noughties he became one of the game's most recognisable faces. He is the author of a critically acclaimed series of columns in the Observer, the founder and former owner of the car magazine, Octane, former owner of an award-winning restaurant and bar, and star of a major ITV series, Fortune Millionaire Giveaway. In 2008 he produced and solely funded the critically-lauded British film, Telstar, the story of the legendary record producer and songwriter, Joe Meek, starring Kevin Spacey.