Tag: Joshua Robinson

‘Messi Vs. Ronaldo: One Rivalry, Two GOATs, and the Era That Remade the World’s Game’ Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson (2022)

Everyone knows Messi and Ronaldo. Most readers of this review will know their origin stories, their achievements and their legends. Many, like me, will have been fortunate to see them both play in person. Some will have read bios of both or even previous dual-bios of the pair (like the enjoyable 2018 book by Jimmy Burns).

Given all that, I was a little hesitant to pick this up, but did so based on the quality of Clegg and Robinson’s previous book The Club which examined the business story behind the founding and success of the English Premier League. I hoped they would take a similar approach to examine the impact of Messi and Ronaldo on the sport off the pitch as much as on it and I was not disappointed. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting read.

Messi v Ronaldo avoids retelling the details of the players careers in any level of detail. Instead it tells their story with a focus more broadly on how football and individual clubs evolved both as a sport and a business during their careers. It zooms in on the key actors – Jorge Mendes the agent, Messi’s own father Jorge, and Real Madrid chairman Florentino Perez especially – looking at how they shaped the changing football landscape and how these changes arose because of, or were shaped by, Messi and Ronaldo themselves. Of most interest is the behind the scenes insights into how certain transfers happened or how people reacted to well known events.

Clegg and Robinson ultimately present the two players as hugely powerful entities in their own rights who impacted the entire operations of the clubs they played for. While they won buckets of trophies, the ultimately didn’t leave clubs in positions of long term strength and their enduring legacy may be their part in the rise of the idea that a superstar can be bigger and more powerful than any one club in the social media age.

The strength of the book is the author’s journalistic talents and their eye for telling a compelling story. It is clear a vast amount of research went into the book which ensures it is packed with insight. The ability to zoom in on specific moments or trends helps the book to avoid being a conventional (dual) biography.

Above all the book is exceptionally readable. While many of the broad strokes will be familiar to long time football fans, their is enough insight and new reporting here to interest anybody. Highly recommended for anyone looking to relive their glory days ahead of their swansong World Cup this winter.

‘The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports’ by Joshua Robinson & Jonathan Clegg (2019)

The English Premier League (or EPL) has for 20 plus years been the highest profile football league in the world.  Serie A may have been better in the 90’s, La Liga may have the world’s greatest players in the 2010’s but for sheer visibility, interest and commercial success the EPL has reigned supreme for over 20 years.

The Club tells the business side of the Premier League’s rise and continued success.   It’s a tale of TV broadcast deals, merchandising strategies and corporate takeovers.  It chronicles the various decisive moments that turned the EPL into the marketing, financial, cultural and entertainment behemoth it is today.

This book tells the story chronologically from how Sky won the pivotal TV rights contracts, through the rise of Man Utd and Arsenal, the era of the oligarchs and finally its look forward to the future (spoiler alert, the EPL is likely to still dominate unless we end up with a European Super League).

The book zooms in on a variety of different clubs at different times since 1992.  Many of the stories will be familiar to long-time football fans.  These vignettes are at their most interesting when they detail failures like Randy Lerner’s ill-fated spell in charge of Aston Villa, and Hicks & Gillett’s best forgotten time in charge of Liverpool.

Its main characters are Richard Scudamore, the long serving chairman of the Premier League, and Manchester United, the team who have long led the way commercially.  As the fates of others rise and fall, Scudamore and Utd remain ever present at the top controlling things.  As Scudamore steps aside (and the EPL fail to find a replacement), and Utd continue to fall from grace, it starts to look like this may truly be a new era for the EPL off the pitch!

The book is extremely well-researched.  Robinson and Clegg, both Wall Street Journal reporters, have clearly conducted a significant amount of interviews with anyone and everyone in the world of football. With the benefit of hindsight, it is fascinating to look back at those pivotal moments and decisions when the world’s most popular football league was unalterably changed.

Overall, The Club is extremely readable.  It’s got enough new information for long time  fans of English football while remaining accessible enough for more casual soccer fans.  There are some stories I would have liked it to examine in more detail, but narrowing the business story of the last 25+ years of top-flight English football down to a single book was always going to require some editorial judgement!

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