A book review ofone of teh best football books out there, Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski.
First published as Why England Lose, Soccernomics proudly flaunts on its cover The Guardian’s opinion that it is, in fact, ‘Fantastic Freakonomics for Football’. And that is also largely what the book offers. A collection of observations and hypotheses that will seem counter-intuitive, but are supported by statistics, examples and anecdotes that will make you mumble mild expletives. For someone who has a keen understanding of the game and has closely followed the recent happenings in the footballing world, the book will present roughly an equal number occasions when you will utter an emphatic what as opposed to an exactly. For the uninitiated football fan, the book presents a treasure trove of facts, anecdotes and perspectives to get you completely hooked on to the sport. If Soccernomics doesn’t, I don’t know what will.
Currently a Life and Arts columnist for the Financial Times, Simon Kuper, apart from having written Soccernomics, has also authored several sport related books. Wikipedia expertly cites a line from his bio – that he writes from an ‘anthropological perspective’. You understand exactly what this means once you read Soccernomics. Stefan Szymanski’s current research interests as stated by the University of Michigan, where he is currently the Co-Director for the Centre of Sports Management, are
‘Sports management and economics; sport history, culture and society; European sport and the internationalization of sport; international sports federations and the governance of sport.’
This might as well be a short introduction to Soccernomics and does a fair job of setting expectations of what you can expect from the book. So when a sports journalist with an anthropological view and a statistician with a particular inclination towards the sports and their confluence with society come together, research and write, it turns out to be a wonderland for any inquisitive reader who follows sport or has a burgeoning interest in it.