Soccernomics - Softcover

‘an Arsène Wenger of a book – more thoughtful than most of its rivals and, by football standards, positively intellectual.' The Times

‘Soccernomics is the intellectual's guide to football, written for the layman. No matter what nation, club (or even sport, really) you support, you'll walk away from this book with an insightful new point of view that will cause you to never look at the game quite the same way again.’ Bleacher Report

‘...the author Simon Kuper and the economist Stefan Szymanski do for soccer what “Moneyball” did for baseball.’ New York Times

‘Every page engages, entertains and challenges the lazy assumptions that still dominate football, not merely in its punditry, but all too often in the way that clubs are run.' FourFourTwo

‘Compulsive reading’
Daily Telegraph

Does hosting a sports tournament make people happier?
Which country has the most passionate fans?
Is English football racist?
Can football really save lives?

Football truly is the world game, followed in over 200 countries by hundreds of millions of people who each pour their heart and soul into supporting their team every week.

But now an economist and sportswriter have joined forces to bypass the heart and soul and apply their heads to the game, testing the received wisdom and challenging the assumptions of a sport that is quite literally a matter of life and death for some. Forget what you know about football and prepare to question every aspect of the culture surrounding the Beautiful Game.

Soccernomics is the fully revised and updated edition of Why England Lose, with new chapters on football finances and the rise of Spain as the pre-eminent team of our times. Using hard fact and statistics to cut through emotive cliché and outmoded thinking, Soccernomics not only sheds light upon football, it illuminates much about the world we live in now.

‘Takes the breath away’
FourFourTwo

‘More thoughtful than most of its rivals and, by football standards, positively intellectual.’
The Times

‘Freakonomics for football’
Guardian