Football's Secret Trade

Football's Secret Trade PDF Author: Alex Duff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119145457
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A no-holds-barred exposé on the financial transactions of the world's favourite sport The transfer fees clubs pay to sign top players now top €4 billion a year but much of the money has been flowing out of the game. A small group of wealthy investors including Russian oligarchs, English racehorse owners and a former billionaire gold miner have seized the opportunity to enter this booming market. Some have moved in on the territory of banks and lent money to clubs in exchange for a share in fees generated by Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and dozens more of today's stars. Others have acquired obscure teams to get a piece of the pie. Even as the global financial crisis sent fortunes tumbling this select group found a profitable place to park their money. The size of the transfer market has continued to rise –- it increased seven-fold in value the last two decades, more than the FTSE share index. Between them, these wealthy investors have amassed hundreds of millions of euros in profits. At the same time, they have managed to stay out of the spotlight the world’s most popular sport brings. Football’s Secret Trade follows the money along a trail very few know about, from nondescript offices in the U.K. and ramshackle stadiums of South American clubs you have probably never heard of to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean. Warning – you won’t see a major transfer deal in the same light again.

Football's Secret Trade

Football's Secret Trade PDF Author: Alex Duff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119145457
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
A no-holds-barred exposé on the financial transactions of the world's favourite sport The transfer fees clubs pay to sign top players now top €4 billion a year but much of the money has been flowing out of the game. A small group of wealthy investors including Russian oligarchs, English racehorse owners and a former billionaire gold miner have seized the opportunity to enter this booming market. Some have moved in on the territory of banks and lent money to clubs in exchange for a share in fees generated by Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and dozens more of today's stars. Others have acquired obscure teams to get a piece of the pie. Even as the global financial crisis sent fortunes tumbling this select group found a profitable place to park their money. The size of the transfer market has continued to rise –- it increased seven-fold in value the last two decades, more than the FTSE share index. Between them, these wealthy investors have amassed hundreds of millions of euros in profits. At the same time, they have managed to stay out of the spotlight the world’s most popular sport brings. Football’s Secret Trade follows the money along a trail very few know about, from nondescript offices in the U.K. and ramshackle stadiums of South American clubs you have probably never heard of to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean. Warning – you won’t see a major transfer deal in the same light again.

Football's Secret Trade

Football's Secret Trade PDF Author: Alex Duff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119145422
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
A no-holds-barred exposé on the financial transactions of the world's favourite sport The transfer fees clubs pay to sign top players now top €4 billion a year but much of the money has been flowing out of the game. A small group of wealthy investors including Russian oligarchs, English racehorse owners and a former billionaire gold miner have seized the opportunity to enter this booming market. Some have moved in on the territory of banks and lent money to clubs in exchange for a share in fees generated by Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and dozens more of today's stars. Others have acquired obscure teams to get a piece of the pie. Even as the global financial crisis sent fortunes tumbling this select group found a profitable place to park their money. The size of the transfer market has continued to rise –- it increased seven-fold in value the last two decades, more than the FTSE share index. Between them, these wealthy investors have amassed hundreds of millions of euros in profits. At the same time, they have managed to stay out of the spotlight the world’s most popular sport brings. Football’s Secret Trade follows the money along a trail very few know about, from nondescript offices in the U.K. and ramshackle stadiums of South American clubs you have probably never heard of to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean. Warning – you won’t see a major transfer deal in the same light again.

Meat Market

Meat Market PDF Author: Bruce Feldman
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 162681483X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
"One of the most insightful books ever written about college football." —The New York Times Now revised and updated by the author, MEAT MARKET proves that in college football, the game off the field is more brutal than the one on the field. In this shattering expose, Bruce Feldman goes into the war rooms to show who stands to profit when champions get built, and at what cost. A college football program can become a multi-million dollar industry for its school, but only if that program wins. The quest for excellence goes beyond the guts and the glory of the gridiron—it goes into the war rooms where recruiters size up every metric to determine which high-school phenom they want to recruit to the university. Bruce Feldman—FOX Sports College Football Insider—rips the cover off the game’s frenzied pursuit of raw talent, taking you deep inside the SEC war room of recruiting legend Ed Orgeron, the combustible Cajun who helped build national championship teams at the University of Miami and at USC. In a stunning, blow-by-blow account of the year leading up to National Signing Day 2007, the award-winning journalist shadows Orgeron and his Ole Miss assistants as they set about hunting high school students, pleading, plotting, and inventing ways to lure them to their sleepy Oxford campus. Packed with candid confessions and outrageous off-the-field action, Meat Market makes what happens on the field seem almost tame by comparison. MEAT MARKET is a must-read for all college football fans, an eye-opening discovery of what it takes to put their favorite team on the field.

I Am The Secret Footballer

I Am The Secret Footballer PDF Author: Anon
Publisher: Guardian Faber Publishing
ISBN: 1783350032
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
This updated edition of the bestselling and wildly popular I Am the Secret Footballer features a new introduction and an additional chapter. The anonymous writer of The Guardian's "Secret Footballer" column gives Premiere League fans an insider's look into the unseen world of professional football. It is often said that 95% of what happens in football takes place behind closed doors. Many of these stories I shouldn't be telling you. But I will. Who is The Secret Footballer? Only a few people know the true identity of the man inside the game. Whoever he is-and whatever team he plays for-TSF is always honest, fearless and opinionated. Here he takes readers past the locker-room door and reveals the inner-workings of a professional club, the exhilarating highs and crushing lows and what it's really like to do the job most of us can only dream of doing. TSF chronicles the exploits of his Premiership colleagues with a gimlet eye and frank humour. Managers, agents and players are not spared from his observations-their mindsets, their relationships with those outside the sport, their behaviour good and bad. In his inimitable style, TSF recounts entertaining and eyebrow-raising vignettes, naming names and dropping colourful details along the way.

The Manager

The Manager PDF Author: Mike Carson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408841622
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
From the post room to the board room, everyone thinks they can be the manager. But how do you manage outrageous talent? What do you do to inspire loyalty from your players? How do you turn around a team in crisis? What's the best way to build long-term success? How can you lead calmly under pressure? The issues are the same whether you're managing a Premier League football team or a FTSE 100 company. Here, for the first time, some 30 of the biggest names in football management reveal just what it takes. With their every act, remark, and success or failure under constant scrutiny from the media and the fans, these managers need to be the most adroit of leaders. In The Manager they explain their methods, offer lessons they've learned along the way, and describe the decisions they make and the leadership they provide. Each chapter tackles a key leadership issue for managers in any walk of life and, in their own words, shows how the experts deal with the challenges they face in an abnormally high-pressure environment. Offering valuable lessons for business leaders and fascinating behind-the-scenes insights for football fans, The Manager is an honest, accessible and unprecedented look at the day-to-day work of these high-profile characters and the world of top-level football management. Featuring: Roy Hodgson, Carlo Ancelotti, Arsène Wenger, Sam Allardyce, Roberto Mancini, José Mourinho, Brendan Rodgers, Harry Redknapp, Sir Alex Ferguson, Walter Smith, Mick McCarthy, Gerard Houllier, Tony Pulis, Martin O'Neill, Neil Warnock, Howard Wilkinson, Kevin Keegan, Dario Gradi, Andre Villas-Boas, David Moyes, Alex McLeish, Hope Powell, Martin Jol, Glenn Hoddle, Chris Hughton, David Platt, Paul Ince, and George Graham.

Playing for Keeps

Playing for Keeps PDF Author: Chris Mortensen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A look at how close the Mafia came to gaining control of professional football explores the seamy underside of college sports, money laundering, gambling, and game fixing.

Thirty-One Nil

Thirty-One Nil PDF Author: James Montague
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408851598
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
WINNER OF THE FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS The story of the immense struggle to qualify for the World Cup, Thirty-One Nil roams from American Samoa to Zambia in a remarkable and insightful journey that gets under the skin of world football. In a tiny, decaying aluminium smelting town in southern Tajikistan, a short drive from a raging war zone, Afghanistan take on Palestine in the first Asian qualifier for the World Cup. Every player on both teams is risking something by playing: their careers, their families, even their lives. Yet, along with thousands of other footballers backed by millions of supporters, they all dream of snatching one of the precious 32 places at the finals; and so begins a three-year epic struggle – long before the usual suspects start their higher-profile qualifying campaigns under the spotlight. Named after the greatest victory (and defeat) that the World Cup qualifiers have ever seen (Australia's 31-0 victory over American Samoa), Thirty-One Nil is the story of how footballers from all corners of the globe begin their journey chasing a place at the 2014 World Cup Finals. It celebrates the part-time priests, princes and hopeless chancers who dream of making it to Brazil, in defiance of the staggering odds stacked against them. It tells the story of teams who have struggled for their very existence through political and social turmoil, from which they will very occasionally emerge into international stardom. From the endlessly humiliated San Marino to lowly Haiti; from war-torn Lebanon to the oppressed and fleet-footed players of Eritrea, in Thirty-One Nil James Montague gets intimately and often dangerously close to some of the world's most extraordinary teams, and tells their exceptional stories.

Fourth Down and Inches

Fourth Down and Inches PDF Author: Carla Killough McClafferty
Publisher: Carolrhoda Books
ISBN: 1467710679
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
When the 1905 football season ended, nineteen players were dead and countless others were critically injured. The public was outraged. The game had reached a make-or-break moment?fourth down and inches. Coaches, players, fans, and even the president of the United States had one last chance: change football or leave the field. Football's defenders managed to move the chains. Rule changes and reforms after 1905 saved the game and cleared the way for it to become America's most popular sport. But they didn't fix everything. Today, football faces a new injury crisis as dire as 1905's. With increased awareness about brain injury, reported concussions are on the rise among football players. But experts fear concussions may only be the tip of the iceberg. The injuries are almost invisible, but the stakes couldn't be higher: the brains of millions of young football players across the country. Award-winning author Carla Killough McClafferty takes readers on a bone-crunching journey from football's origins to the latest research on concussion and traumatic brain injuries in the sport. Fourth Down and Inches features exclusive photography and interviews with scientists, players, and the families of athletes who have literally given everything to the game. It's fourth and inches. Can football save itself again?

The System

The System PDF Author: Jeff Benedict
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0345803035
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more, The System explores and exposes the complex, and perhaps broken, machine that churns behind the glamour of college football. With a New Afterword.

The Football Girl

The Football Girl PDF Author: Thatcher Heldring
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375987142
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book