Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed And The Souring of British Football - Softcover

Bower, Tom

3.59

134 ratings by Goodreads

9780743440332: Broken Dreams: Vanity, Greed And The Souring of British Football

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743440331 ISBN 13: 9780743440332

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2003

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Greedy, vain and ambitious personalities dominate English football. From the author of devastating exposes of Mohamed Fayed, Richard Branson and, most recently, Geoffrey Robinson, BROKEN DREAMS is a superbly incisive account of how self-interested individuals, adopting questionable and predatory business methods, are exploiting the sport of football to earn billions of pounds and huge glory. Focusing on key figures including Terry Venables, Ken Bates, David Dein, Harry Redknapp, Rio Ferdinand and other famous agents, chairmen and managers, Tom Bower exposes the money, the politics, and the vicious battles behind the beautiful game. For the first time a non-sports writer reveals the vanity and greed which endanger the national sport.

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Review:

TV has transformed football beyond all recognition but, according to investigative biographer and historian Tom Bower, where there's brass there's muck. Broken Dreams is Bower's controversial account of how some of the sport's most high-profile managers and chairmen have been getting their snouts in the trough at the expense of their clubs and the game.

Focussing on the likes of Terry Venables, Brian Clough, Ken Bates and Harry Redknapp--and a huge cast of FA officials, club bigwigs and super-agents--Bower draws together threads from existing sources, with newly acquired information from over 200 interviews, weaving a compelling tale of vanity, greed and corruption at the heart of the football establishment.

Bower argues that the increasingly uneven struggle between the regulatory body, the FA, and the bullies of the gold-rush frontier, the Premier League chairmen, is at the heart of football's problem--the failure of the former to respond to the mounting evidence of dodgy dealing and corruption, and the ruthless efficiency with which the latter have exercised their financial clout. The result is a free rein for the murkier ambitions of some of the most publicly respected individuals in the game today.

It's hard to believe that the general thrust of Bower's account will come as a shock to anyone who's followed the sport over the last 20 years--though if nothing else he completely destroys the shrewd wheeler-dealer image of former West Ham boss Redknapp. What Bower brilliantly succeeds in doing is applying a forensic rigour to the task of sifting the facts from a mound of rumour and conjecture, and doing so fearlessly. --Alex Hankin

Review:

'A devastating book, an indictment of football that all fans should read and understand' -- The Times

'All fans should read this expose of football's financial secrets . . . a devastating book' -- Observer

'An astonishing job of investigation . . . At times he even seems to know what goes on in people's bank accounts' -- Daily Telegraph

'You really must read Broken Dreams. Tom Bower exposes the ineptitude, complacency, corruption and greed that permeate the game' -- Sunday Times

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