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

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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

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 3,265 ratings · 276 reviews

Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn’t America dominate the sport internationally...and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style?

These are questions every soccer aficionado has asked. Soccernomics answers them.

Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on h

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published October 27th 2009 by Nation Books (first published January 1st 2009)

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Apr 02, 2012 Erich Franz Guzmann rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2000s, award-winner, education, fußball, historische, non-fiction, own, politik, reference, economic, kultur, book-club, business, sociology, europa, afrika, asien, nordamerika, südamerika, author-male, dramen, realism, sport

As soccer being my favorite sport, I was really hoping to like this a lot more than I actually did; and it did have some really interesting parts to it. A big problem it had in fact was it took way to long to actually get to those good parts. If it had kept in my favorite sections and cut the length of the book in half, I would be giving this book 5 stars easily. I can't complain too bad though, because I did get some enjoyment out of it and I did get some really interesting facts as well.

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Oct 17, 2012 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not a mathematician, but I am a lover of 'the beautiful game', and I found this book really engrossing and read it quickly. It has a completely different way of looking at football from a socio-economical/mathematical angle, and made some really good points. I didn't agree with all of their arguments though, I thought the logic was flawed in places, but I loved the fresh perspective and occasional appearance of dry humour throughout the book. In several places it hits you with some truths wh...more

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Aug 29, 2011 James Van rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting take on lots of stuff about soccer, and I learned a bunch of stuff, but I think some of the conclusions are flat-out wrong.

I think the authors tried to draw too many conclusions from a relatively small amount of knowledge of baseball and football. Many lessons have been learned since Moneyball (defense is valuable), and there's a lot more knowledge about football (running backs, not so much) than what was stated.

One chapter tried to argue that the NFL has no more parity than the EPL...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Matti Karjalainen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: tietokirjat, urheilu, kotikirjasto, in-english, jalkapallo

Simon Kuperin ja Stefan Szymanskin "Why England Lose: and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained" (HarperCollins, 2009) on kiinnostava matka jalkapallon ja tilastojen maailmaan. Parivaljakon tarkoituksena on tarkastella erilaisia kuningaspeliin liittyviä, yleisesti totuuksina pidettyjä väittämiä ja uskomuksia, sekä tutkia erilaisiin tilastoihin turvautuen mahtavatko ne pitää lainkaan paikkaansa.

Kuperi ja Szymanski käsittelevät kirjassa mm. Englannin alisuorittamista (mitä se ei itse asiassa...more Simon Kuperin ja Stefan Szymanskin "Why England Lose: and Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained" (HarperCollins, 2009) on kiinnostava matka jalkapallon ja tilastojen maailmaan. Parivaljakon tarkoituksena on tarkastella erilaisia kuningaspeliin liittyviä, yleisesti totuuksina pidettyjä väittämiä ja uskomuksia, sekä tutkia erilaisiin tilastoihin turvautuen mahtavatko ne pitää lainkaan paikkaansa.

Kuperi ja Szymanski käsittelevät kirjassa mm. Englannin alisuorittamista (mitä se ei itse asiassa tee, mikäli laskelmiin otetaan mukaan asukasluku, maan taloudellinen tilanne ja kansainvälinen kokemus), tulevaisuuden todennäköisiä menestyjiä (USA, Turkki ja hieman yllättäen Irak) ja nykyhetken suurimpia floppeja (Intia ja Luxemburg), rankkarieihin venyvien otteluiden ratkaisuja, jalkapallokentillä esiintyvää rasismia ja brittifanien lojaalisuutta. Tutkimuksen kohteeksi on päätynyt myös melko erikoisia aiheita, kuten se aiheuttaako arvokisoissa tapahtuva putoaminen piikkiä itsemurhatilastoissa.

Norjalaiset löytävät kirjasta aihetta mielihyvää. Kuperin ja Szymanskin mukaan Norja on valtava ylisuorittaja nurmikentällä ja kaiken lisäksi maassa seurataan asukaslukuun suhteutettuna enemmän jalkapalloa kuin missään muualla maailmassa. Suomea ei mainita kuin yhdessä ainoassa tilastossa, josta käy ilmi että me olemme eurooppalaisesta näkökulmasta yksi suurimmista alisuorittajista ikinä.

Mukana on myös ajankohtaisia aiheita: eräs luvuista on omistettu Etelä-Afrikan maajoukkueelle sekä lähestyville MM-kisoille, joiden hyöty maan taloudelle ei tulekaan olemaan erityisen merkittävä, poliitikkojen päinvastaisista vakuutteluista huolimatta. Yleistä onnellisuutta arvokisojen järjestäminen sen sijaan vaikuttaisi lisäävän.

Vaikka tilastoihin pohjautuva kirja voisi etukäteen tuntua tylsältä, niin lopputulos on kuitenkin kiinnostava ja vetävästi kirjoitettu teos jalkapallosta ja siihen kytkeytyvistä ilmiöistä. Suositeltava teos kaikille futiksen ystäville - eritoten meille, jotka toivovat Englannille menestystä tulevissa MM-kisoissa.
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Mar 14, 2011 Michael Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, sports

Inspired by Levitt's Freakonomics, Soccernomics is yet another book about ... wait ... it's the first book that tries to datamine everything about soccer (ahm, football.) Two authors with affinity for football and statistics have embarked in the eternal game of showing that you can prove anything you want with unverified data and faulty methods. Much as in the case of Freakonomics, I disliked the results: using the method of this work (regression of multiple rather thin and shaky datasets), you...more

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Apr 17, 2010 Caleb rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a book in the Freakonomics, Moneyball genre, and it is quite good. These guys have a strong mastery of the sports end plus the math to back it up. They certainly make some great points about overpaying for veterans and the lack of professionalism in managing.

Though I suppose a good thing, I had my quibbles. It's another book claiming there is no more parity in the NFL than in the Premier League and top soccer, and that's nonsense. The same few teams win every year in soccer, and the fact...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Francis Kayiwa rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Ian

I’ll be honest I saw the review

“A blend of Freakanomics and Fever Pitch, bringing suprising economic analysis on the world’s most popular sport… a thught-provoking, often amysing read –Bloomberg News“

trumpeted on the cover of this book and I instinctively knew it would be a chore to like it. I quite enjoyed reading Fever Pitch and the less I say about Freakanomics the better. As with Freakanomics *sigh* it is puzzling if one is expected to read this as a scholar or as a popularization of a schol...more I’ll be honest I saw the review

“A blend of Freakanomics and Fever Pitch, bringing suprising economic analysis on the world’s most popular sport… a thught-provoking, often amysing read –Bloomberg News“

trumpeted on the cover of this book and I instinctively knew it would be a chore to like it. I quite enjoyed reading Fever Pitch and the less I say about Freakanomics the better. As with Freakanomics *sigh* it is puzzling if one is expected to read this as a scholar or as a popularization of a scholarly subject. The former requires careful examination of the authors claims and ensuring they have corroborating evidence while the latter requires only that the author present a reasonable case. I had to re-read the first couple of chapters of the book because I started out trying to examine the authors claims and decided I wouldn’t enjoy it at all and elected to read it for entertainment.

Here I am not suggesting that popularization cannot be entertaining nor the claim that entertainment can not inform. Nor should one infer that all or most of the claims in the book have been created “out of whole cloth”: it is not difficult to find many claims in Soccernomics that are well supported. Rather, the reader is given little guidance as to when to expect that a claim in the book is well–founded, mere speculation or in some cases, contrary to fact.

To their credit the authors do acknowledge the limitations of standard economics to explain football. The problem however to me was that it requires careful attention to note this very tacit admission. They very easily could have adopted the now debunked attitude that followed the whole Freakanomics nonsense. The smug “…we know best because we are rational thinkers…” is mostly absent here.

What about the Football you ask? It is actually quite good. As an Arsenal Football Club supporter it is quite easy to have my teams philosophy of pragmatism praised. I found their predictions on future World Cup winners preposterous but they do make a compelling case. In the end it is the one thing that a good statistician will tell you.

First, in highly competitive fields there might be stronger incentives to ‘‘manufacture’’ positive results by, for example, modifying data or statistical tests until formal statistical significance is obtained. This leads to inflated error rates for individual findings: actual error probabilities are larger than those given in the publications. … The second effect results from multiple independent testing of the same hypotheses by competing research groups. The more often a hypothesis is tested, the more likely a positive result is obtained and published even if the hypothesis is false.

The authors actually detail where they are doing this. They admit where data is unreliable but still forge ahead and make conclusions.(less)

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Jan 20, 2010 Daniel Solera rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: athletics, business-economics

Soccernomics is a statistical study of the world’s most popular sport in the vein of Steven Levitt’s bestseller Freakonomics. Authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski delve into soccer by abandoning all conventional wisdom about the sport and studying it strictly by the numbers. Because of their data-heavy approach, the majority of the book focuses on European soccer, because it is from European sources that their findings are most reliable.

The book is framed around several questions: Which coun...more Soccernomics is a statistical study of the world’s most popular sport in the vein of Steven Levitt’s bestseller Freakonomics. Authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski delve into soccer by abandoning all conventional wisdom about the sport and studying it strictly by the numbers. Because of their data-heavy approach, the majority of the book focuses on European soccer, because it is from European sources that their findings are most reliable.

The book is framed around several questions: Which country plays the best soccer? Which has the best fans? Who is destined to dominate the sport? Which countries play better than they should, and conversely, who underachieve? From here, the authors use game results, demographic studies, attendance statistics, often citing the UN Human Development index to correlate factors such as a country’s access to medical resources and its success on the turf.

In these investigations, many fun notions are unearthed. The authors discuss why England, the creator of soccer, isn’t dominating the field (a combination of a restrictive recruitment method, a shockingly dysfunctional business model amongst soccer clubs, and geographical isolation). They criticize soccer’s status quo, which prevents managers from hiring minority or female coaches, provide a wealth of charts to show which teams, despite the sizes of their home countries and experience on the international level, show promise (Georgia, Iraq, the Czech Republic). They also illustrate penalty kicks as a psychological treasure trove for the study of game theory. There’s also a chapter that discusses how hosting a large sporting event, such as the 2016 Olympics, can be economically damaging to a country but a boon to the happiness of its inhabitants.

It was only until the final chapter that the authors shared their analysis more equally with the rest of the world. I understand their reliance on Europe for most of the book – not only are their European statistics the most sound, but the continent is also the birthplace of the sport – but my personal bias would have liked more insight into Mexico and Central America. There was also a jarring chapter linking sports and suicide prevention that significantly slowed down the pace.(less)

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Mar 12, 2011 Damon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: soccer

Soccernomics is done in the style of "Freakanomics," but with a sports writer's eye for details and story. Having studied Statistics and Data Analysis, I know that all data and surveys results must be taken with a grain of salt. Although, the writers do have a persuasive arguement for how economics and location, strongly effect why certain countries continually do well in international competitions, and others continue to struggle.
One particular chapter I liked, discussed Game Theory, and how...more Soccernomics is done in the style of "Freakanomics," but with a sports writer's eye for details and story. Having studied Statistics and Data Analysis, I know that all data and surveys results must be taken with a grain of salt. Although, the writers do have a persuasive arguement for how economics and location, strongly effect why certain countries continually do well in international competitions, and others continue to struggle.
One particular chapter I liked, discussed Game Theory, and how it is linked to penalty shoot outs. I have several friends who are video game and board game designers, and they love discussing Game Theory with me. So it was a pleasure to listen to several economisists discuss the applications of Game Theory to sudden death penalty shootouts. In practice, it is a lot like playing rock, paper, scissors. If you know your opponent has a tendency to play scissors, then you should play rock to beat him. However, if your opponent knows that you know that he likes to play scissors, then he will play papper to beat your rock. However, if you know that he knows, that you know, than you should be the one to play scissors to beat his paper. This can go on forever,...in theory.
I also enjoyed the discussion on hosting the World Cup, and why countries continue to covet it, even though more and more economicists are argueing that it does not improve the economy, but actually puts a bigger burden on the host. The authors also compare hosting a soccer cup, to building NFL stadiums, baseball parks, hockey rinks, and hosting the World Rugby Cup, or the Cricket World Cup. The authors argue that the premesis behind, "if you build it, they will come," is false, and only leads to bigger profits for the team owners, at the expense of the local residance.
Now, many of the ideas that the authors argue will continue to be a topic of debate for many years to come, they don't have all the answers but I did enjoy the book a lot, and recommand it to any soccer fan.(less)

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Nov 30, 2011 Doreen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book gets a qualified five stars: if you don't care for international sports, or if popular economics holds no interest for you, then you probably won't care for Soccernomics. But if you, like I, have a fondness for The Professor (a.k.a Le Professeur a.k.a Arsene Wenger) because he is pretty much the living embodiment of the intersection between sports and economics, then you will love this book, too. Unsurprisingly, Wenger is lauded as one of Soccernomics' heroes, alongside Guus Hiddink, w...more

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Dec 23, 2010 Johanneskim rated it 1 of 5 stars

I do not know why Simon Kuper is regarded as one of soccer's most authoritative writers. His knowledge of German football is definetely limited. It seems to me that he takes data to try to prove his biased pre-formulated opinion. For example: Several facts he misstated about my hometown team. We are not in a small metropolitan area. Next to us are Düsseldorf and Cologne, very well connected. He mentions that we spend most of the decade (from 2009) in 2d division. That is not true. It was two yea...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Ryan Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction-2010, sports

The first few chapters were quite enlightening and engaging. Some of the later chapters didn't capture my attention as well - the questions the authors asked weren't all that interesting and their statistical analysis lacked a sense that they were using good numbers and in the right way. For example, I'm just not convinced that the number of international games a country has played equates to a good measure of 'experience' in any meaningful sense. Playing a bunch of friendlies against podunk opp...more The first few chapters were quite enlightening and engaging. Some of the later chapters didn't capture my attention as well - the questions the authors asked weren't all that interesting and their statistical analysis lacked a sense that they were using good numbers and in the right way. For example, I'm just not convinced that the number of international games a country has played equates to a good measure of 'experience' in any meaningful sense. Playing a bunch of friendlies against podunk opposition hardly equates to the same level of experience as playing in the World Cup finals against proper opponents. It was this kind of thing that turned me off of some of the later chapters. The last chapter was quite intriguing, though, and offers an interesting window into the future - we'll see if it pans out the way the statistics suggest.

At any rate, I felt that I learned something, not only about soccer, but about statistics, and I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who regularly follows soccer, especially international and European club soccer.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking point for me was the presentation of the idea that many times people in the soccer business do things out of tradition, assuming that the traditional way of thinking about things is right simply because it's always been done that way. The statisticians can show otherwise. What's fascinating, though, isn't just the ignorance of modern methods and thinking, but the assumption that they are right even when you can prove that they are wrong. I think this may be human failing that can be applied to other aspects of the human experience both in the present and in the past (thinking as a historian, here). Can we understand the actions of people in the past as the product of what might be called pseudo-rationalistic thought - thinking that we are thinking rationally, even 'certain' that we are doing so, when in fact we are thinking quite irrationally and making decisions based on that thinking? It's something I plan to run with a little bit.(less)

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Jun 06, 2011 Christopher Bashforth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent football book, whose premise is to provide statistical background to why certain teams do well and others do not. The authors provide 3 factors why certain countries do well; tradition, wealth and population and guess what – England actually do as well as statistically they should be expected to do. This provide ammunition to my argument that the English media overhypes the team’s chances and should learn a little humility. Other surprising revelations included that World Cups actually...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Benjamin rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who love the WSJ sports page

Shelves: nonfiction

Think of this book less as an illustration of how soccer works, and more as an introduction to what economists actually do, using soccer as a good illustration. Game theory comes to life when examined from the perspective of a player taking a penalty kick. The art of quantifying benefits to a community from taking a certain corse of action is demonstrated by looking at what a community actually gets from hosting a World Cup. And the challenge of creating a good model that will predict success is...more

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Jul 16, 2011 Arjun Mishra rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sports, economics

The Freakonomics-esque approach to tackling the global soccer phenomenon worked, but I have contentions with the book and authors’ premises. I like books like Super Crunchers and Freakonomics that apply statistics and models to real-world situations. I enjoyed this for that same kind of readability and fascination, but it is not as strong as those books.

It is mentioned early by some English players that it is odd for a Manchester United vs. Liverpool rivalry not to have Liverpool or Manchester...more The Freakonomics-esque approach to tackling the global soccer phenomenon worked, but I have contentions with the book and authors’ premises. I like books like Super Crunchers and Freakonomics that apply statistics and models to real-world situations. I enjoyed this for that same kind of readability and fascination, but it is not as strong as those books.

It is mentioned early by some English players that it is odd for a Manchester United vs. Liverpool rivalry not to have Liverpool or Manchester bred players on the team with all of the foreigners on English teams. It is shown mathematically that it is better for teams to open the talent pool as diversely as possible. I think that the vast collection of talent in the Premier League makes it the most difficult and most fun league to watch. However, I do agree with the sentiment that it just feels odd to take players from all around the globe and stick them into major rivalries with incredible historical and sentient ramifications. Should Barcelona play Real Madrid without any Catalonians. I am not implying that the players will play less hard in these rivalry games, but that I can understand the sentiment voiced by some supporters. I think you can insert players from all over the world and England and they will understand the gravitas of the rivalry matches. I believe Nemanja Vidic personifies that. I am disappointed that the book just casually dismissed that concern. It at least deserves to be addressed and considered.

I am not a fan of this Billy Beane Moneyball model. The authors frequently invoke this General Manager for all of the success he has had employing statistics and “playing” the game like an economist. That is great, but the fact of the matter is that the Oakland A’s have not won a World Series under his reign. In fact, they have not even come close. They have fielded some strong teams, but they have never seriously made a challenge for the World Series. Their division has been dominated by the Angels the past decade and now the Rangers look like the strongest team. He might win some games, but the results are largely barren. They overlook the fact that Beane is not a winner.

My main gripe with the premise of Moneyball is that it does not seek winning. I believe the point of playing sports is the ultimate prize of winning the large championships, be it the league or UEFA Champions League. It merely seeks to make a bit more money by buying players for less than they are worth and selling players for more than they are worth and gaining some more fans. That does not ensure or germinate success. They state outright that soccer teams do not turn profits very often. In fact, they spend an entire chapter on the bizarre nature of finance in soccer. Fans want winning teams. Buy and sell players, but they almost eschew the purpose of winning in this book. They praise Arsene Wenger for employing these tactics before everyone else, and they laud him for selling Henry just before his decline. Henry might have declined, but he did something that Barcelona he never did at Arsenal, which is win a Champions League. He is not the Henry of old, but he is an ultimate winner. I place a premium on winning; the authors do not.

Along with the lack of emphasis on winning, they seem to praise fair-weather English fans rather than the Hornby-esque fans of true passion. I do not doubt their statistics on most people being casual and polygamous fans. It is true in American stadia as well that the majority of fans stay home to watch the game or do not watch the game period. I prefer fans who strongly support teams.

I found it funny that they harped on Netherlands and Spain being teams that have not achieved and yet, that was the World Cup final in 2010. They acknowledge that Spain is becoming one of the best nations for soccer and that the Netherlands is declining. They are far too harsh on Netherlands, though. Their reasoning is that the Dutch and continental European knowledge of the game is being exported to developing and rising nations that will soon dominate soccer. They were exceedingly harsh on Netherlands, not prescient enough on Spain, and uninformative on the United States.

My favorite chapters were the insights into English soccer and the exportation of “European” soccer to the world. It will be interesting to see how the predictions turn out, since they make some bold picks in the title for future success. The final chapter with Guus Hiddnick is quite good, and it encapsulates the “rise of the rest.”

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (less)

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Jan 18, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: numbers, kindle, soccer

Soccernomics is a fantastic look at a soccer from a completely different point-of-view than you're probably used to seeing. Using statistical techniques like regression and massive amounts of old match results and other data related to both the classic and modern game of soccer, Kuper and Szymanski bring a new insight to how we think of the beautiful game. There are sections on national teams, club teams, and fans, and they all bring a style similar to Freakonomics and its look at different popu...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Tim Roast rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a study into the economics of football. For example it looks at the business side of clubs, the relative success of international sides based on their populations, experience and wealth...

There were good things about this book:

* A few stories (i.e. the journalistic bits that presumably Simon Kuper wrote like the write-up of the Ajax and Barcelona academies)
* Interesting findings based on data (e.g. straight away it's mentioned that the inswinging corner to the near-post results in more g...more

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Jan 25, 2010 Erik Bal rated it 4 of 5 stars

Every four years, with the coming of the World Cup, many new soccer books are released. The authors and publishers no doubt are hoping to capitalize on the sport's exposure to push sales. Soccernomics is not for the casual fan. The book delves very deeply into statistics behind the game. There is a lot of discussion of mathematical regression and very little anecdotal evidence, such as is seen in Jonathan Foerr's "How Soccer Explains the World." Also, the book focuses exclusively on continental...more

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Feb 05, 2013 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, reviewed

Frequently condescending, and I don't agree with some of the premises, or some of the biases, but I did enjoy some of the sections, particularly the ones about actual in-game statistics (regarding penalties, for example) rather than whether poor countries are better/worse at soccer. Also an interesting read when contemplating why a director of football would pay, oh, I don't know, £35 million for an underperforming player, sigh. I will say that one of the more ridiculous aspects of the book was...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Yofish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-sports

Really 3.5

Purports to sort of be "MoneyBall" for soccer. But it just doesn't quite work. The stats for soccer just don't quite make the same sort of sense as they do for baseball. The authors are a pair of economists.

Some interesting stats about penalty kicks and game theory; one could argue that shooters go left or right pretty much exactly as often as they "should."

We learn that a countries success in the World Cup can be well-predicted by 3 things: population size, GDP, soccer experience. A...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Overall, a solid and interesting read. The really flimsy link they attempt to prove correlating lowered suicide rates with successful soccer teams is incredibly flimsy and far and away the worst chapter of the book.

Another thing that stood out: the authors spend a good portion of an early chapter arguing that managers at club teams are relatively unimportant, yet devote later chapters to the idea that national team managers from "core nations" (Germany, Netherlands, etc.) who export their socce...more

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Aug 20, 2009 Rob rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A longer version of the following review can be accessed at: Why England Lose

I must confess that I entered upon the reading of Why England Lose with a heavy heart. Although I enjoyed the playful tone and sharp conclusions of Freakonomics, I found it to be a somewhat glib volume that exercised extreme selectivity with its data in order to “prove” its points. For the world of football to be afforded the same treatment by an economics profession that has largely lost touch with the real world, been...more A longer version of the following review can be accessed at: Why England Lose

I must confess that I entered upon the reading of Why England Lose with a heavy heart. Although I enjoyed the playful tone and sharp conclusions of Freakonomics, I found it to be a somewhat glib volume that exercised extreme selectivity with its data in order to “prove” its points. For the world of football to be afforded the same treatment by an economics profession that has largely lost touch with the real world, been instrumental in bringing about global crisis, and carried it all out with a smug, “we know best because we are rational thinkers” grin, was a prospect that held little appeal. A recent book by Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis effectively debunked the Freakonomics myth and even the mainstream of the discipline has now largely moved on.

I thus read the text with an eagle eye to see if Szymanski remains beholden to the now discredited theories of straightforward neoclassical economics. Without question, he likes playing around with numbers. There is little econometrics in the text and mathematical content is kept to a minimum, but it’s very clear that statistics provide the foundation on which the central theses are built. Refreshingly, however, the limitations of standard economics are tacitly admitted and new currents of thinking abound. That hottest of new fields, behavioural economics is omnipresent, with issues such as fairness and reciprocity freely debated. Equally, the institutional context is in the foreground: habits, norms, values and cultural factors are all given their space in the book’s models. In addition, and all too rarely in these times, history isn’t ignored either: football has only been properly organised for a century and a half and the coverage of Why England Lose covers the whole period. Towards the end, notions of happiness are explored in the context of staging major events such as Olympics and World Cups, a much talked about benchmark of society’s wellbeing popularized by economists such as Andrew Oswald and Richard Layard.

So Szymanski is steeped in modern economics and has moved adroitly with the times. What of the football?

It’s actually pretty good. The dual author team display much knowledge and keen research and their claims are generally very plausible, even if the criteria and framing of their models is necessarily limited on occasion. As a fervent lower league supporter, I didn’t much enjoy the discussion of fair weather fans, but we all know that Kuper and Szymanski are right to point out how widespread they are. The prediction of which nations are likely to be world football powers soon - Turkey, China, Australia etc. – was fascinating, and the 12 Point plan the authors devise to avoid mistakes in the transfer market is superbly argued.

The only major problem with the book is the highly misleading title. The book isn’t very much about England at all and the news that Peter Crouch’s Dad is the Creative Director of an International Advertising Agency apart, provides little in the way of interest concerning the Three Lions. “Soccernomics”, albeit clichéd and too resonant of Steve Shmankse’s Golfonomics, would have been a choice more appropriate to the book’s content. Nevertheless, overall, Kuper and Szymanski provide much to chew on for football folk and the general public alike. It’s just a shame that the title may prevent the latter from picking the book up.(less)

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May 05, 2011 James Loftus rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book styles itself early on as a soccer version of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, this is an ambitious target, that frankly it doesn't quite hit. This is more in the line of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything for soccer. Still a very interesting read. I think that there are some arguments that are based on pretty thin factual evidence, but most are very well thought out and researched. One caveat is that the book is very focused on Britain...more

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Mar 30, 2010 Alicia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Marcelo and I got into a screaming fit last night over this book. I was trying to tell him some things that this book said and he didn't believe me. And so he started going off about how anyone can put ANYTHING in a book, and how you can't always believe what books say. (I think he was supposed to be talking about the Internet, but whatever). I think he was offended when I said that English Soccer owners run their clubs very unlike Americans. So the English almost never make money, but the Ameri...more Marcelo and I got into a screaming fit last night over this book. I was trying to tell him some things that this book said and he didn't believe me. And so he started going off about how anyone can put ANYTHING in a book, and how you can't always believe what books say. (I think he was supposed to be talking about the Internet, but whatever). I think he was offended when I said that English Soccer owners run their clubs very unlike Americans. So the English almost never make money, but the Americans do. The book wasn't praising the U.S. It was just pointing out a statistical fact!! But it really riled him up.

So don't read this book and then get into arguing fight with your football fanatic of a husband. This book was written by some statisticians. So if you don't like statistics, you probably won't like it. But if you can remember back to that one class of stats that you took in college, you'll be just fine. They take it pretty easy on the readers. And they have stats about all sorts of things when it comes to the game. Who under-performs? Who over-performs? Who is the next up and coming team to watch? Does soccer effect suicide rates? Why do people think that good soccer players grow up poor? Is that really true? And why do countries want to host World Cups if it doesn't make them any money?

This book talks about all of that and it also includes quite a bit about soccer history and the history of the leagues in Europe. Just so you know, it mostly focuses on the Premiere League and other European Leagues. (We happen to be big fans of both in this house, so I wasn't a fish out of water.) If you don't like European soccer, then again, this book is not for you. I found it very interesting, though. However, I tend to find lots of things interesting that other find boring.

A must read for soccer fans

Oh, and you know how the English make fun of us for saying "Soccer" when they say "football?" Well, where do you think we got that word? We didn't invent the game or name it ourselves. Actually, the book points out that the ENGLISH gave it that name and called it that for almost 100 years. And then it fell out of favor. So they started calling it football and then mocking all other that called it soccer!! SO STOP MAKING FUN OF US BRITISH!! YOU TAUGHT IT TO US IN THE FIRST PLACE. Cheeky Brits.(less)

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Apr 07, 2012 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

This is as much an introduction to economic thinking as it is to soccer. But it was interesting, and I highlighted the heck out of it (though because I read it on Kindle and not iBooks, it's harder to look back at my notes. iBooks is better).

An interesting stat that I wish were easier to track is how a team under/overperforms against expectations based on where matches are, experiences, GDP, size, etc. (Hint: US is a big underachiever).

Also very interesting to note how the network of soccer expe...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book combines several things I love: Soccer and Data.

If you love the game, you'll enjoy this book. If you love statistics and data, you'll also probably appreciate this book. If you don't like either, it's probably not the best book for you.

Kuper and Symanski do a great job using data to help understand the game--both historically and currently. It's an interesting read that isn't bogged down by numbers and offers very handy charts to help explain some data. It also provides very interestin...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Alistair rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title tell you everything . The authors use statistics and data to answer some hot footie topics . Although there are a fair amount of of figures the authors have written a very funny book and debunk a lot of myths that are popular especially about English football .
There is a very funny chapter on why England are always knocked out in the quarter finals , we are basically crap and why Arsene Wenger did so well when he first arrived in England , because he used a lot of analysis for example...more

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Jun 26, 2010 Luke Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Some fascinating number crunching for soccer fans and sociologists alike. A very thoughtful dissection, from a statistical and numerical standpoint, about how sports and society interact. I'd go three and a half stars (some passages are a bit dry, but overall it's very interesting), except there are a few moments where you wonder how thoroughly the accuracy has been checked. For example, when talking about Field of Dreams, they identify that unforgettable mantra as "If you build it, HE will come...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Matthew Gaughan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sport

Why England Lose is interesting and sometimes absorbing, especially the first half of the book when the authors incisively lampoon the way football clubs are run, but its second half is a little speculative, seeming to reach a conclusion and then working out stats that justify that conclusion. Any contradictions in the authors' reasoning are either glibly dismissed or simply ignored and I found its tone hectoring and smug towards the end. It is definitely worth reading, but this is no Moneyball...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Brian Sison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction, psychology-economics, sports

The quote on the cover sums it up: "A blend of Freakonomics and Fever Pitch, bringing surprising economic analysis to bear on the world's most popular sport." - Bloomberg News

The chapter on penalty kicks was outstanding, some others not so much.
A lot of the best parts of the book were seeming non-sequiturs relative to the primary push of the authors. Along with the question of penalty kicks, the authors whetted the appetite of the reader by touching on topics of discrimination in soccer, the ri...more

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“It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.” — 6 people liked it

“Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.” — 5 people liked it

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title link	preview: 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
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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

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