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salexander7341's review against another edition
1.0
1. It isn't insightful.
Almost nothing in this book is insightful. If you like Freakonomics because it poses fascinating questions, or at least uses statistics to suggest weird possibilities, this book is not for you. Most of the topics covered in the book are your typical soccer discussions, like "Why doesn't England win the World Cup" and why are so many great players from poor backgrounds. The problem is, the authors regularly take a trip around the world to answer a question they actually answer in about 2 paragraphs at the end of the chapter like it is some great wisdom. Take for instance the intersection of poverty and later sporting success. This chapter starts by suggesting that poverty has little to do with it, because if you grew up in a poor neighborhood in Paris then you are not actually that poor. They imply that they will reveal some other factor, something you have
not considered, that will explain this. So the book proceeds by creating a throughly arbitrary system of points based on international success in various sports that shows us that, surprise, rich countries are good at sports, which also holds true per capita. Then, in the last two pages, they tell you that Malcolm Gladwell [fantastic author] answered this question to their satisfaction decades ago, and everything they told you was not really anything new. Poverty does create the result we see.
To explain, these players in a Paris neighborhood experience relative poverty, or lack of resources compared to those around you. In impoverished countries, people more commonly experience "absolute poverty," or the lack of basic necessities. These are both social problems, but they are not the same thing. The worst part of all of this is that I just explained the information better than they do. Their 20 page chapter could be reduced to a few sentences without even their involvement.
This is how each chapter generally takes place.
2. It's ten years old.
This is a simple problem, and not the authors' fault. Reading this book now is akin to reading early sabermetrics and being surprised at what you learn. The concepts discussed in this book have permeated the discussion of the sport to the degree that this book feels largely elementary in the present day. Again, it is not the authors' fault that their book did not age well, but it is important to know if you are considering reading it.
3. The casual treatment of statistics.
The authors' present each chapter as some question answered by an interesting application of statistics. Frequently, while the questions may disappoint in their lack of ingenuity (see 1), the statistics do suggest interesting possibilities. The problems arise because anyone with a above-casual familiarity with statistics (or a deep interest in the game and paying attention) with see immediate problems. Whole statistical conceptions will ignore easy improvements. An entire chapter hinging on "Which country most outperforms their demographic stats in world football?" falls apart about a paragraph in when you wonder why they haven't considered using Elo ratings to measure the level of competition. At first, we get straight win-loss comparisons, which the author's acknowledge is not very insightful. By the end of their "improvements," we get to an idea best summarized as: "Only European teams play good opponents most of the time so it is impossible to tell outside of Europe." Except we can, with Elo (which existed 10 years ago).
This book had me regularly wondering why they were ignoring a major flaw or improvement in their model, especially once they would behave as if the problem was unsolvable. They would see the error, but could not fathom ways to fix it (in one case, remembering that standard deviations exist would have made some information more useful). At some times, the book indicated gross misreadings of the data they presented (or at the very least, they explained it so poorly as to be indistinguishable for misunderstanding their data). At other times, obvious variables were omitted that would have better explained the data, or real-life factors that should inform the analysis were dismissed as irrelevant.
In summary, if you want to read a book that is just a rehash of other, better, books (usually directly quoted in the chapters), this book is for you. If you want to read a book that is out of date by 10 years and may have been out of date at publishing, this book is for you. If you want to wonder how two professionals could have thought so little about the statistics or how the world works to inform their analysis, this book is for you.
It wasn't for me.
tbueno's review against another edition
3.0
I gave it a 3 stars because it is too England centered. I understand that the authors are more familiar with UK clubs and it is easier to get statistical data about Britain football, but it lacks a world context in a lot of the explanations.
Is that possible write about football without barely mention Brazil? A lot of the ideas described in the book simply don't apply to other countries. Use geographic/political context to explain how a nation is better that another in Europe may make sense, but it doesn't apply to countries like Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and even US.
tucholsky's review against another edition
1.0
mattycakesbooks's review against another edition
4.0
It's part of this growing trend to introduce big data to everything, and while I think the trend in general is a good thing, I also feel the need to point out that while economists are very good at making quantitative judgments - showing, for example, that communities don't actually recoup their investments from stadiums - they aren't as good at making qualitative, moral judgments. Not that I think anything the writers of Soccernomics (this comment is aimed as much at Freakonomics as it is at this book) suggest is blatantly immoral, but economics is an amoral field, and while it does a great job at shattering myths and misconceptions, economics can only really serve as a starting point for debating the morality of a situation. Data isn't a moral entity, it's just data, and efficiency in itself isn't necessarily a moral concept.
robthereader's review against another edition
4.0
Starting with the issues of the work, one can not ignore, however unfair it may be, that a good chunk of its information is now dated, seven years later even not accounting for the global economic turning on its head event of the Covid 19 pandemic. There are chapters dedicated to Barcelona’s prolific academy (once a true romantic story, now much less so with the background politics and mismanagement) and soccer clubs never disappearing (one of the 94 teams in the fabled english soccer system closed before Covid with another two coming close afterwards) to name two shortsighted inspections. There is also a weird proclivity to tout Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s GM of Moneyball fame, as if it was a buff piece for how his insights are now a main driver in soccer recruitment (Doubtful as buying low and selling high has been the merchant’s game for millennia). Finally, their megadata studies seem faulty in their sources and methods which to their credit, they acknowledge most of the time.
Brushing this all aside, Simon and Steven do a great job of interviewing some of the game’s top brains and using megadata sets focused on individual countries and clubs. Highlights include their chapter dedicated to the luck or rather better defined odds of penalty taking, the importance of coaches or rather lack there of and how to research and prove of discrimination in the workplace against PoCs through wage variation versus performance. Their hot takes beat plenty of prominent sportswriters and armchair analysts to the punchline in predicting the sealed off upper echelon through UEFA’s financial fair play, the celebration of Iceland’s fandom and intuition to create soccer ability from such a small population and the flooding of soccer with superfluous data. They do a remarkable job in detaching themselves from the economics train of thought of Markets, Markets, Markets and GDP to explore the real reason sport benefits society, general happiness. They even go through the math, again not using the most directly corresponding data sets, to prove this.
Finally, they probably make their biggest statement on what relates the game and business of soccer to economics, the use of internationalism and free trade to continuously improve. Whether that is through the importation of the world’s best players to the Premier league or the exportation of the game and then central Europe’s cosmopolitan tactics to the edges of the world, soccer truly is the world’s game. They predict that this trend will lead to the rise of new world soccer powers in the far east and the US at the expense of traditional middleweights who have less room for growth. In an era where leaders are waging trade wars, borders are closing and idea exchange is challenged with the new normal of telecommuting, one must not forget that change and the rate of change only improve when novel and scientific ideas are encouraged to be spread, debated and accepted. If that is kept in mind, maybe Simon and Stefan will be proven right and the US can win a world cup in the next 50 years.
vyorgov's review against another edition
5.0
adamrbrooks's review against another edition
4.0
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 expertise played a big role in how countries developed.
The only criticism I might make is that the book assumes that the current "core European" style of play that is dominant will always be dominant. It may be, but it may be that a change in that core will lead to a change elsewhere. The game is always evolving. Though technology probably allows those changes to come more quickly to the whole world.
An early chapter also discusses how a manager is not as important as the structure (and wealth) of a club. Which is true; however they don't really tie that to international soccer, where I would presume managers DO have more influence (and that's probably why the last, glowing chapter is on Guus Hiddink).
andyirwin89's review against another edition
4.25
The section examining institutional racism in football is particularly strong, and the authors challenge longstanding assumptions in the game that managers must come from the stock of former professional players. It asks why women can't hold top coaching and managing positions in the professional men's game, or why managers need to have played professionally at all.
It also examines why clubs fail and succeed based on their geography, and the data in the section on international teams' success creates plenty of room for discussion. While the authors do not take into account factors such as the average age of international squads or the number of players playing in major national leagues or intra-continental competitions, it does use data effectively to dispel myths and lazy conventional analysis.
'Soccernomics' is the state-of-the-art work in its field, presenting complex data in an accessible way and begging for greater innovation and insight within the world's most televised, lucrative professional sport.