Be Careful What You Wish For

Book excerpt: Ever dreamed of owning your boyhood football club? Be careful what you wish for... 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. The perfect Christmas gift for all football fans. 'One of the best football books you will ever read' Birmingham Post