Football Paradise dives deep into the story of Bournemouth AFC, charting their incredible rise from near-extinction to a strong force in the Premier League.
In October 2000, a gangling 18-year-old Jermain Defoe made his Bournemouth debut and scored against Stoke City in Division Two – the third tier of English football. Little did he and the club know that 17 years later, via the occasional glamour and frequent slumps of playing for the likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Portsmouth and Sunderland, which came after a stint across the Atlantic in Toronto, he would be back in the magnificent red and black of the Cherries for, possibly, the final phase of his career in the Premier League.
Bournemouth have never been a club to challenge the upper elite of English football having played in the Championship for just two seasons before the 21st century. They looked dead and buried just before the turn of the decade, but are now a stable club, making waves in the Premier League and constantly making excellent progress on and off the pitch. In 2000, Defoe set a post-war record of scoring in his first 10 games, but that was in the third tier, with Bournemouth faithful having little to no expectation of making it this far in a relatively short space of time, but now that they are here, after the ups and downs, Division Two is long forgotten as the club stand firm at the top of the ladder, with the aim of bringing European football to the south coast – a prospect that looks like a distinct possibility looking at the way they are going.
Their road to the Premier League was difficult. The club were predominantly a League 1 side and spent just four years in the Championship before their first promotion to the big time, and had it not been for a few extremely influential figures, the club would not have existed today. On several occasions, they were just minutes away from going defunct, but managed to save themselves right at the death. The Premier League is the deserved reward for the effort and perseverance of several figures and the club is only going upwards.