A review by leslielu67
Soccernomics by Stefan Szymanski, Simon Kuper

3.0

This book tries to be Freakonomics for soccer, but it needed a good editor - should have been at least 75 pages shorter. The authors will spend four pages detailing how a certain statistic was derived, and then throw out "many soccer moms are glad that soccer is not a big professional sport like basketball or football...they are wary of big-time American sports, where stars do lousy and unethical things like shooting their limo driver." WHAT!!? And "it's striking how many of the most enthusiastic soccer players live on little islands where there presumedly isn't much else to do but play soccer and watch the waves roll in." Support your statements, or leave it out, S&S.