Book Review: Soccernomics

Book Title: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

Author:Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

What is it about: It is about soccer (football) and economic. ;) Yeah, we know you can tell that from the book title. We highly recommend those who love the beautiful game and want to know more in depth statistics about the game to read this book. It analyzes football in a economical way, which is very interesting, and don’t worry, the two authors did not use a lot of economical terms. It is easy to read and easy to understand, even for people like us, who have zero sense in economy. This book analyzes interesting football phenomenon using statistics, graphs, numbers and help you understand more about the relationship between the game, and the outcomes. There is one chapter we strongly recommend, it is chapter 6, The Economist’s fear of the penalty kick: Are penalties cosmically unfair, or only if you are Nicolas Anelka?
Want to know why it is unfair to Anelka? It dates back to the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United, which ended with a penalty shootout. According to the book, before the final, a friend of Avram Grant had introduced the former Chelsea manager to Ignacio, an economist who study penalties. He then gave Grant a report on the pattern of Man Utd penalties taking and Van der Sar saving. In order to give you guys a better view of what the book is actually about, we will summarize the report and you must read it and watch the penalty shootout again:

1.Van der Sar tended to dive to the kicker’s ‘natural side’ more often, meaning facing a right footer, he would dive to his own right and his own left facing a left footer.
2. Majority of penalties that Van der Sar stopped were mid-height, so either kick the ball high up or on the ground.
3. When C.Ronaldo stops in the run-up to the ball, he is likely to kick to the right hand side of the keeper, and he can change his mind at the very last second, so it is very important for the keeper not to move early.

But how did all these have anything to do with Anelka? Because if he follows the instruction, he should kick the ball to Van der Sar’s left hand side (Anelka is a right-footer), but before him, many Chelsea players took that side and Van der Sar seems to think that they decided to take all their penalty to his left, so when it was Anelka’s turn, he pointed to the left. Being caught in a dilemma, Anelka choose to kick the penalty to the keeper’s right, mid-height, and it was saved. Interesting right? Still not convinced that penalties can be studied? Watch another penalty shootout and see how Van der Sar saved the penalties. This book has a lot more football theories for you to find out, and penalty is just a tiny part of it.

Quotes:‘Stupidity is part of the soccer business.’; ‘Buy players with personal problems at a discount, then help them deal with their problems (So I guess QPR bought Joey Barton is a smart move?)’

Rating: 8.5 out of 10