Football's Secret Trade

Chapter 4An East End Scandal

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, a trim man in his 50s, was in a hurry as he took a cab to West Ham's Upton Park stadium in a scruffy part of east London in the first week of September. The club had its heyday in the 1960s, when it produced a string of talented young players. It was in the era before the transfer market took off, when commercialism had yet to take hold in the game. In 1964, the club's manager Ron Greenwood had taken the F.A. Cup trophy home on a London “tube” train wrapped in cloth after the Hammers had beaten Preston North End in the final. Two years later, three members of his team – Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters – helped England win the World Cup, snapping the dominance of Pelé and Brazil.

However, West Ham had dropped out of the Premier League in 2003, the same year that Roman Abramovich had bought Chelsea and – although it returned two years later and continued to produce talented players – it did not have the financial clout to compete with the biggest English clubs. Its latest generation of talented players – such as Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole – had one by one left for bigger-spending clubs. The club's song, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, featuring the line “fortune's always hiding” was now more apt than ever. When Scudamore travelled there for a scheduled meeting in 2007, the club was trying to avoid relegation again.

Scudamore's car made its way down Green Street, where pie-and-mash ...