Be Careful What You Wish For
Read Be Careful What You Wish For Online
Authors: Simon Jordan
contents
3. First Steps Into The Big World
7. ITV Digital: The Football League Armageddon
8. Trials, Tribulations And Blueprints
14. Light At The End Of My Tunnel
15. Stop The Train, I Think I Want To Get Off!
About the Book
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 £75 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.
About the Author
Croydon-born Simon Jordan made millions in his twenties selling mobile phones. In 2000 he bought Crystal Palace Football Club, which he’d supported since childhood. Aged 31 he become the youngest Chairman in history. Ten years later, after ups, downs, and a huge level of self-financing, Jordan quit the club after being forced into administration for reasons beyond his control. During his ten-year tenure he was never afraid to speak out. He wrote a widely-followed series of columns for the
Observer
, which commented forthrightly on the game today.
list of illustrations
1.
Simon Jordan, 2000 (courtesy of Getty Images)
2.
At The PocketPhone Shop; Steve Coppell; Alan Smith (both Getty Images); at Blackburn Rovers (Press Association)
3.
In the stands at Stockport County (Press Association); Clinton Morrison and Dougie Freedman (Action Images)
4.
Steve Bruce, Steve Kember and Terry Bullivant; Steve Bruce leaving the High Court (both Press Association)
5.
Trevor Francis; Steve Kember (both Press Association); Iain Dowie (Getty Images)
6.
Neil Shipperley scores against West Ham, 2004 (Getty Images); celebrating in the stands (Blades Sports Photography)
7.
Team celebrations, 2004; Andrew Johnson (both Getty Images)
8.
With Iain Dowie, 2005 (Getty Images)
9.
Playing in Geoff Thomas’s testimonial (Action Images); playing at Wembley (Getty Images)
10.
Outside the FA tribunal (Press Association); in the stands for the 2004 play-off semi-final first leg (Getty Images)
11.
Arriving in court; Iain Dowie arriving in court (both Rex Images); Peter Taylor (Press Association)
12.
With Theo Paphitis (Press Association); with Lynval Golding (private); with Steve McClaren, Daniel Levy and Paul Kemsley (Action Images)
13.
On the red carpet with Nick Moran (Press Association); with Nick Moran, Carl Barat, JJ Feild and Pam Ferris at the
Telstar
premiere (Getty Images); sat in the Club Bar and Dining (Rex Features)
14.
With Neil Warnock (Action Images); Victor Moses celebrates; John Bostock (Press Association)
15.
In the stands for the game against Burnley (Press Association); Palace players rue miss in the 2008 play-off semi-final (Getty Images)
16.
Simon Jordan, 2007 (Action Images)
To the most precious thing in my life, my darling daughter Cameron
INTRODUCTION
My name is Simon Jordan. I am the former owner of Crystal Palace Football Club and the former owner of a string of businesses from mobile phones to film companies. I am also the former owner of £75 million, perhaps proving that ‘a fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place’.
In order to tell this story I will show you just what it felt like in 2000 when, aged thirty-two and listed as the 712th richest man in the country, with the world at my feet and choices aplenty, I chose to buy a football club, the youngest person in the world to do so. You’ll see how I felt when, aged thirty-six, I became the youngest owner of a Premier League club, and what happened when in 2010 I lost it all. This is a tale fraught with great highs and devastating lows.
Football is the national game and means so much to so many, but it’s mostly about money now, not passion. I had both the money and the passion for my club, so with these bed partners I took a shot at achieving something. A few times I nearly got it dead right. Rightly or wrongly I spoke my mind in no uncertain terms and my outspoken attitude launched a thousand headlines.
Whether
it was taking on the football establishment or fighting for my own club I caused mirth and mayhem in equal measure.
During my time I wrote acclaimed columns for the
Observer
which were said by others to be unique, hard-hitting and informative, but there I had a word limit and a defined subject matter; in this book I have no limits and so I will tell you exactly what goes on behind the running of a football club ‘when Saturday comes’. Without bias, prejudice, bitterness or agenda (well, not too much), I will tell you about the real world of football – the personalities, the myths, the players, the managers, the hangers-on, the agents – every facet of this unique business that is not quite bound by the normal rules of society.
Throughout this book you will encounter household names and characters and discover what they were really like, you’ll have my take on situations you’ve perhaps heard about and you’ll read things that will make your jaw drop. At points you are likely to laugh or shake your head in disbelief as I bloody did.
But this book is also about a journey, one that I’m still undertaking today: it’s the story of someone who has always backed himself to the hilt even when the odds seemed stacked against him. Most of the time this worked in my favour. Ultimately, it didn’t.
The legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly famously once said: ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death … I can assure them it is much more serious than that.’
At 3 p.m. on 26 January 2010 I found out what Bill Shankly meant. Administrators were appointed into Crystal Palace Football Club, ending my ten-year ownership, ripping away my dreams and ambitions, wiping out vast amounts of my wealth.
Losing ownership of a football club has far-reaching effects and given my affinity with my particular club it leaves scars. Whilst this
book
is not about score settling, rest assured I will lay bare what happens when events overtake you, people betray you and agendas become all too apparent.
This is not a story about Crystal Palace; it’s a story of what it’s really like to own a football club, warts and all. It is a tale of ambition and dreams coupled with excess, politics, some stupidity, irreverence and humour.
Let’s face it: everybody would love to own the club they support. You would, wouldn’t you?
1
MIRACLE AT THE MILLENNIUM
MAY 2004. IT’S
a sweltering hot day and I am standing in this bloody suit I’ve worn every Saturday for the last three months. I swear the damn thing is going to walk off on its own and I am dying to get it off, but it’s my lucky suit! I can’t help but pander to my newfound superstition that wearing it makes a difference.
So here we are, the suit and I, slap bang in the middle of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, surrounded by nearly 40,000 delirious Crystal Palace supporters, each one drowning in euphoria. It is one of those rare moments when all the shared hopes, dreams and aspirations have finally come to fruition.
I came to discover that moments like these are extremely scarce.
During the previous ninety-three minutes, against resounding odds, I watched the team I owned and loved get promoted to the Premier League. I had pumped my heart, soul and a king’s ransom into this club and now they had reached the Mecca, the promised land of top-flight football.
We had just beaten West Ham United, the overwhelming favourites, in the play-off final. Prior to the game I had heard on good authority that the Hammers had already booked their victory party
and
bus parade through the streets of East London. Oh dear, Mr Pardew.
As luck would have it, fate was inexplicably stacked against them.
Take the hotel, for instance. We were booked into the Vale of Glamorgan, where all the previous play-off winners had stayed. The Hammers also drew the short straw in terms of dressing room. They were forced to enter the field from the south dressing room, which had yet to yield a play-off winner.
Then there was Neil Shipperley.
I had taken the striker off the administrators at Wimbledon Football Club in recompense for failing to pay their cleaning-up bills at Selhurst Park when they were our tenants.
Talk about cleaning up: I had just watched Shipperley bag a six-figure goal bonus for the solitary strike that catapulted us into the big time and instantaneously cleared the entire West Ham end of the stadium.
As a precautionary safety net I had attempted to broker a unique deal with West Ham whereby the losers kept the entire gate receipts as a small consolation prize instead of sharing them. The arrogant buggers were so confident they were having none of it. Their loss.
Did I really care about some minor spoils though?
People never forget where they were at key moments in history. For me, Saturday 29 May 2004 was one of them. I had many doubts during my tenure at CPFC, but this day was one time when I had few regrets.
Here I was, if only briefly, a god amongst men in the eyes of the club’s supporters. I had delivered on my promise to bring Premier League football back to Selhurst Park. And I’d done so a year earlier than I predicted when, back in 2000, I rescued the club from administration and an uncertain future.
The almost daily battles, bust-ups and dramas that had ensued since then receded into distant memory that day. It was a phenomenal achievement by my team. In November 2003 they had lain fourth from the bottom of the division and now here they were, taking, in my view, their rightful place amongst the English football elite.
As I was cocooned in my own little bubble my mobile phone went into terminal meltdown as message after message from around the world went unanswered. I randomly answered one call. It was Ian Wright, the iconic England and former Palace striker and a close friend, screaming down the phone in celebration.
As I made my way around the Millennium Stadium, taking in the unprecedented outpourings of emotion, my mind flashed back to a similar occasion marked by widespread tears and relief.
It was another May three years earlier, and took place in rather less auspicious surroundings but it was nonetheless equally important. Dougie Freedman scored a goal in the eighty-seventh minute at Edgeley Park, the home of Stockport County, and catapulted himself into Palace folklore. This minor miracle saved us from relegation to the third tier of English football in my first traumatic season.
