The Club Quotes

“The Premier League is a timeless tale of boom and bust, no different from all those other bubbles they warn you about in business-school textbooks. Except, that is, in one crucial respect. In football, the bubble never burst.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“This business, ultimately, embodied the challenges of globalization, of the push and pull between expansion and identity, about the universalization of a product that is steeped in decidedly nonuniversal customs.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“The rise of the English Premier League is a story about the sports world's wildest gold rush. In the span of twenty-five years, the league's twenty clubs have increased their combined value by 10,000 percent, from around $100 million in 1992 to $15 billion today.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“The reason is that the Premier League is a much smaller government than any of its American counterparts. It’s first and foremost a media-rights-selling organization that happens to provide twenty clubs with a platform, referees, and a match ball.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“It didn’t take long for other clubs to follow them across the pond. In 2005, Fulham accepted an invitation from Major League Soccer to play in the league’s annual All-Star Game. Chelsea made the trip the next year, and West Ham took its turn in 2008. If the matches themselves weren’t always thrilling spectacles, there was at least evidence that English clubs were treating them more seriously. West Ham’s supporters lent a sheen of authenticity to the whole thing when they engaged in a brawl with fans of the Columbus Crew, an unlikely outbreak of violence at a so-called friendly game that ended only when police administered pepper spray to both sets of fans. “We wanted to show people what we’re about,” West Ham manager Alan Curbishley remarked after the game.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Deadline Day in England is like scrambling around the supermarket the night before Thanksgiving—except all of the turkeys have agents.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Despite having the largest budget in the league, Guardiola had failed to mount a serious challenge of any sort. And the media seized on his continued failure to reach a Champions League final without Messi, his on-field nuclear weapon. All of it was proof that his tippy-tappy tiki-taka might have worked in Spain or Germany, but Guardiola couldn’t expect to try that stuff in Manchester and succeed. The phrase “Welcome to the Premier League, Pep” was uttered and printed sarcastically more times that season than anyone could count. The tabloids even had a new name for this delicate Catalan genius. Fraudiola.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Core players had turned on Ranieri and lobbied the owners to replace him with his English assistant, Craig Shakespeare. The narrative gathered enough steam that, at Shakespeare’s first game in charge, the Leicester fans unfurled a gigantic display urging their team to CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR. Their choice of a line from William (not Craig) Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a play about a Roman leader betrayed by former allies, was no accident.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Having the might of the U.S. Marine Corps at your disposal is one thing. Having the 2015–16 Aston Villa squad was quite another. Villa couldn’t win on the road at Norwich, hardly a Premier League minefield. Things fell apart for good on April 16, with a defeat at Manchester United. By then, the Villa fans were so deep into gallows humor that they chanted, “Let’s pretend we’ve scored a goal,” before belting out a rendition of “We’ll Meet Again.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Equal parts jealous and appalled, fans of rival clubs who saw hapless City catapult literally overnight into the ranks of world soccer royalty wasted no time in ripping the team for abandoning its roots. “You’re not City, you’re not City, you’re not City anymore” went the song from opposing fans. A few City supporters agreed. Some even mailed back their season tickets.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“City had always prided itself on being more authentically Manchester than United. Matches at Old Trafford were so full of tourists that opposing fans sang, “We’ll race you back to London.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“And the locals, disappointed by owners in the past, seemed to appreciate him. Finding the new owner’s name tricky to pronounce, the fans nicknamed him “Frank”—to Mancunian ears, Shinawatra sounded like Sinatra.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“That summer, two of Wenger’s French boys went off to join their national team at the 1998 World Cup in their home country. Les Bleus marauded their way to the final, where they overpowered Brazil, 3–0. The final goal was swept in by Petit and assisted by Vieira. In London the next morning, the front page of the Mirror carried a photo of those two players locked in a hug beside a headline that showed just how much their stodgy old London club—and English soccer—were changing. ARSENAL WIN THE WORLD CUP, it read.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“A club that hadn’t been top-tier champions since 1955—“You won the league in black-and-white” was the chant from the away section—or lifted a major trophy of any kind since the 1970s, Chelsea was a deeply local concern with a legacy of shaved-head hooliganism.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“Only Arsenal has avoided relegation completely since reaching the top division in 1919.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“But while the league’s official competition focused on its key markets in Asia, where the popularity of English soccer remains unrivaled, others trained their sights in the opposite direction toward a land of opportunity, a sports-crazy country where fans had disposable income to burn and six TVs in every home. All they had to do was convince America that soccer wasn’t the enemy.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“We’re not a football club, we’re actually a sports entertainment media company,” Cook said internally as the new owners swept into City. “So we must create content. We must provide events, we must create shows, we must create drama. And we must be part of the news, front page and back page, in every way. Am I competing with the other football club down the road, Manchester United, or am I competing with Walt Disney, with Amazon?”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“twenty-two men who couldn’t agree on much of anything”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“For a forcefully discreet man,”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports

“I'm not saying that we're Disney, but if you think about it, it's not that dissimilar, Berrada said. We have characters - which are players - that our fans relate to; we put on a show every three or four days. And then we take that show around the world in the summer. In that sense, we are part of the entertainment industry.”
― Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports