Soccernomics
2010 August 30
Soccernomics
Why England lose? Why never suck Scotland? Why doesn t-dominated American sport at international level … & why the Germans play with such style effective, but robotic? These are all questions asked of football junkies. Soccernomics responses. Using insights & analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, & businesses into throw new light on the functioning & entertaining game, Soccernomics reveals truths often surprisingly intuitive football. An essential guide for
(27 reviews)
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Review by D. M. Kemp for Soccernomics
Rating:
I was made aware of this book when I heard one of the authors give an interview. Many of the topics in the interview weren’t in the book, but a host of other areas where. The book is easy to read and well researched. However, it is very much written from a British point of view – so don’t let the Americanized title of Soccernomics fool you. It mainly appears to be a book that hopes to explain to the English that they are not the most rabid fans nor the best players of the game they invented 150 years ago.
Some of the chapters were so absolutely fascinating, I couldn’t stop reading. Other chapters were so ultimately boring that I skipped them. The good thing is that you can skip around and read each chapter independently without really losing any overall scope of the book.
Even though I didn’t agree with some the conclusions and read the data differently, I certainly feel much more knowledgeable about the current game and how we got here. If you are a fan of soccer, you should seriously consider this fact-filled book. It will make for great discussions around the TV during next summer’s World Cup.
Review by Laurence Zimmerman for Soccernomics
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Offers some very interesting insights into the world of soccer. While some compare it to Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball”, it differs in that “Moneyball” deals more with baseball at the micro level, while “Soccernomics” deals with soccer at a macro level. There is a lot of statistical analysis of national teams, but no analysis of individual players. In essence this is one of the difficulties of soccer, as it does not naturally lend itself to extreme statistical analysis like baseball does.
My main argument with the book is that it treats the NFL as the US’s main export sport. While the NFL is undoubtedly the most popular league in the United States, this is a recent phenomenon. Baseball has traditionally been “America’s Past Time” and thus is the sport that the United States spread around the world, although not to the same level that the English spread soccer.
One analysis that I wanted to read about was the success of Latin American teams. In particular an analysis of Mexico and Brazil. Both countries are soccer crazy and have very large populations, but Brazil has won five World Cups and Mexico none. It would be interesting to see an analysis of why this has happend, but the book mainly deals with European teams as their statistics are more reliable.
Review by Paul Allaer for Soccernomics
Rating:
Simon Kuper is the long-time weekly sports columnist in the Financial Times, and he is one of the reasons I so look forward to reading the Weekend Edition of the pink paper. When I saw that he had authored a new book about soccer, and then saw more details about what the book would be about, I knew I just had to have it and ordered it here on Amazon at a very purchase-friendly price.
“Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey–And Even Iraq–Are Destined To Become The Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport” (336 pages) is co-written by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, a British economist. An economist, you might ask? Yes indeed, as this book brings a fascinating look into the numbers of soccer. Here a couple of quotes from the book:
– “In 2002 everyone knew that the obscure, bucktoothed Brazilian kid Ronaldinho must have lucked out with the free kick that sailed into England’s net, because he couldn’t have been good enough to place it deliberately.” (commenting on the English belief of freakish bad luck for their national team).
– “Our finding: England in the 1980-2001 period outscored its opponents by 0.84 goals per game. That was 0.21 more than we had predicted based on the country’s resources. In short, England was not underperforming at all. Contrary to popular opinion, it was over-performing.”
– “Soccer is not only small business business. It’s also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside soccer discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the soccer business.”
– “Provincial towns like Nottingham, Glasgow, Dortmund, Birmingham or Rotterdam all have won European Cups, while the seven biggest metropolitan areas in Europe–Istanbul, Paris, Moscow, London, St. Petersburg, Berlin and Athens–never have. This points to an odd connection between city size, capital cities and soccer success.”
– “Against all evidence, the stereotype persists that the typical British fan is a full-on Hornby.”
– “Staging a World Cup won’t make you rich, but it does tend to cheer you up.” (commenting on, among other things, the bogus arguments that staging a large sports event brings significant positive economic consequences for the host).
But if there is only one chapter that I had to pick out from this book, hands down it is “The Economist’s Fear of the Penalty Kick”, an absolute riveting look at the scientific side of the dreaded penalty kick. Using the analysis developed in game theory, the authors examine how penalty kicks are taken (by the kicker) and defended (by the keeper). It culminates with an in-depth analysis of the Manchester United-Chelsea penalty shoot-out at the 2008 CHampions League final. “Then, in what must have been a chilling moment for Anelka, the Dutch [keeper] pointed with with his left hand to the left corner. ‘That’s where you’re all putting it, isn’t it?’ he seemed to be saying. Now Anelka had a terrible dilemma. This was game theory in its rawest form”. (You’ll have to read the rest of it yourself…)
Of all the books on soccer that I have read in my life time, I cannot recall being more enthralled and entertained than by this book. This is a page-turner from start to finish, and for me one of the very best books of the year, sports or otherwise. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Review by Alan Black for Soccernomics
Rating:
The most intelligent book on football ever written. A fascinating plunge that tackles the games misconceptions, dispossessing the perceived wisdom of the elites, and the fanciful hopes of the hopeless. Everything from the stretch including fascinating analysis of the link between suicide rates and a nation’s soccer success, and the growing muscle of soccer in lands frozen out for decades. Read a cracking insight into the mind of Guus Hiddink, the Merlin of the modern game. Simon Kuper is an outstanding soccer writer, unmatched. Linking up with Stefan Szymanski, they’ve pulled on a winning strip with this book. A must have for all futbol fans.
Alan Black
author of Kick the Balls: An Offensive Suburban Odyssey
Review by Nicholas Nahat for Soccernomics
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For a person almost completely new to soccer, this book was a good introduction to the context of the game. The authors deftly interweave both the political and economic issues involved in both national and international play, for example explaining how soccer began in England and spread throughout the world as part of the British Empire’s ‘soft power’ through the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. There is a good discussion of the export of soccer beyond just Europe, and its more recent penetration outside Europe and Latin America. Unsurprisingly, the main point is that success is a function of population, money, and experience.
The authors generally take a different approach to soccer in each chapter as a digression for analysis of the sport. For example, I found the discussion of whether hosting a major event like the World Cup is an economic benefit or not to be interesting because of a new angle I hadn’t heard before: although little additional money actually flows to an area, which is the usual argument for the project, and may even be costly, the population is generally happier for having hosted the event. Yet, politicians are reluctant to frame a debate in terms of ‘increasing happiness.’ I also enjoyed the discussion of game theory and penalty kicks, how social cohesion from soccer prevents suicides, and the use of Zipf’s law.
On the other hand, I found the argument that soccer was ‘popular’ in the United States unpersuasive, though it depends on how you define popular. Just because kids play alot of soccer, that doesn’t make it a major sport in that country. It might be asking too much from a book so in love with the game, but economists should be at least somewhat objective: truth be told, a majority of the world doesn’t care about soccer–talk of China is conspicuously absent. In fact, soccer is not the most popular sport in 7 of the 10 most populous countries. The World Cup could just as easily be called the Euro-Latin America Cup, based on who has won the event.
The least successful portions of the book are the ones which are almost purely speculative, but at least the authors acknowledge that their empirical data is shaky, like trying to assess which country ‘loves’ soccer most, or the best ‘little’ soccer country on Earth.
Although the authors make many references to the now-classic ‘Moneyball’, Soccernomics isn’t the analog of that book. In Moneyball, one of the most interesting insights was popularizing the newer way of valuing baseball skills, with different statistical measures. Soccernomics doesn’t do that. The best it does is make generally anecdotal recommendations: help foreign players relocate, use the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ or acquire transfers in their early 20s. It doesn’t suggest a method like on base percentage did in Moneyball to suggest which transfers might be undervalued. For example, what statistics might Manchester United have used to determine that Diego Forlan, who had feet of clay for England and earned the nickname Diego Forlorn in his disastrous spell with the team, would later become Europe’s leading scorer, first with Villareal in 2005 and then with Atletico Madrid in 2009.
Soccernomics is a good introduction to the context of the world’s most popular sport and boils down issues of interest to a general audience, but some of the details fray upon closer examination, and it doesn’t completely live up to its promise.