Soccernomics Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Soccernomics

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Zusammenfassung von Soccernomics

Name: Soccernomics
Rating: 4.2 (54 reviews)
Author: Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

Why England Loses; Why Germany, Spain, and France Win; and Why One Day Japan, Iraq, and the United States Will Become Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport

4.2 (54 Bewertungen)

31 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski analyzes soccer using economics and data, revealing surprising insights about the sport and its teams.

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What’s in it for me? Learn a revolutionary new way of thinking about the world’s most popular sport.

Most soccer analysis falls back on cliche, fashion and groupthink: we talk with excitement about the impact our club’s new manager will have, frustrated supporters argue that the club needs to spend big in the transfer market and commentators bemoan the impact of big money and big business on the sport.

But what if this received wisdom was false? These blinks look at the data and the evidence behind the world’s most popular sport.

With a greater understanding of everything from the economics of clubs to the relationship between poverty and talent, you’ll be better equipped to understand and analyze soccer.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why the average soccer club is a bit like your local supermarket;
why players’ wages are a much better predictor of success than their transfer fees; and
what the World Cup has in common with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Soccer is a small and historically bad business.

Observers of modern soccer often lament that it’s become big business. Newly infused with commercial thinking and big money, they believe the game has lost its soul.

The truth is, soccer’s never been big business, and it still isn’t.

Most people haven’t heard of United Natural Foods, a US distributor of organic foods. It’s doing well, but isn’t yet big enough to make it onto the S&P 500 – the list of the 500 largest publicly traded US companies. It’s 75 times smaller than Walmart and by all accounts a solid but unexceptional business. Yet United Natural Foods is a bigger business than every soccer club on the planet.

During 2015-16, Manchester United’s revenue was €689 million. That’s a decent sum, but it’s still less than a tenth of United Natural Foods, and 0.2% of Walmart’s.

Most clubs are the size of a supermarket. Not a supermarket chain, but a single supermarket. Costco’s warehouse stores averaged sales of $159 million in 2016, whereas average club revenues for the 700 top-division European clubs were under $25 million.

One reason for this is that most soccer clubs are simply not run like a business.

Statistical analysis bears this out. Szymanski analyzed the behavior of English and Spanish clubs from 1993 to 2005 to see whether they were pursuing profit or victory. Profit requires limiting wages, which means fewer victories. It’s a simple trade-off. He found that if FC Barcelona wanted to maximize its profits, it would need to aim for 15th in the league to seriously reduce its wage bill. For clubs like Athletic Bilbao, their most profitable position would be in the second league – where they could save a great deal on wages. The clear conclusion was that if profit was the goal, then clubs were spending way more than they should.

The good news is that for most clubs, poor financial management doesn’t matter too much, as they are unlikely ever to go bust.

If a club gets into trouble, it can cut its wages, suffer relegation and keep on playing in a lower division. This is not normal business practice. Ford cannot, in response to poor results, sack its workforce in favor of unskilled employees producing noticeably worse cars. Consumers would simply not put up with the inferior products.

It’s true that there’s more money in soccer than ever before, but most fans can take some comfort knowing that their clubs are being run with an eye on glory rather than the bottom line.

Managers don’t usually matter all that much to a team’s success.

The cult of the manager is a strong one – a new managerial appointment is always pored over by media and fans alike.

The reality is that the vast majority of managers make little difference. Most, in fact, are mediocre. For proof, look no further than the man who oversaw one of the greatest feats in English soccer.

Money spent on buying new players bears little relationship to overall success and is all too often driven by fashion.

In the summer of 2017, soccer clubs around the world spent a phenomenal $4.71 billion on transfers. What if much of this spending was a waste?

Well, there are lots of ways to waste money in the transfer market.

Spending on wages, rather than transfers, is a sure-fire way to success.

If there is only a weak relationship between transfer spending and performance, how come the richest clubs usually win? Well, it’s because there is a relationship between money and performance.

While studies find no strong link between spending on transfers and performance, they find a very strong relationship between spending on wages and performance.

Soccer clubs are slowly getting better at using data to determine player selection and tactics.

When pundits comment on soccer matches, they often talk of passion, drive and determination to win a match – statistics, less so.

But behind the scenes, data is playing a bigger and bigger role in modern soccer.

There are strong links between politics, industry and the success of soccer clubs.

Why is it that towns like Nottingham and Dortmund have won European Cups, while great capitals such as London, Paris, Rome, and Moscow never succeeded until London’s Chelsea finally managed it in 2012? It turns out there are some significant connections between cities, politics, industry and soccer.

The late 1950s and 1960s were the time of totalitarian soccer.

Poor countries are poor at sports, but the same doesn’t necessarily apply to poor players.

From Didier Drogba to Diego Maradona, the origins of many soccer stars are lowly. Is there a connection between poverty off the pitch and riches on it?

The facts show that rich countries are significantly better at sports than poorer countries.

Soccer saves lives by bringing people together.

The idea that people throw themselves off buildings when their teams lose is a common one, and there are cases where that’s happened.

But working with a team of Greek researchers, the authors found evidence that these anecdotes belie the reality – that soccer reduces suicides by the thousands.

England loses at soccer because it’s more insular than its main rivals.

The country that invented the game has failed to win anything since the 1966 World Cup. Why does England never win?

After failing to qualify for Euro 2008, England midfielder Steven Gerrard said the large number of foreign players competing in England was threatening homegrown talent. That, however, is very likely wrong.

Western European countries rule soccer because they’re the best networked.

In the last three World Cup’s, the teams finishing first, second and third were all from Western Europe, with the sole exception of Argentina in 2014.

Why are Western European teams so dominant? One important reason is how networked Western Europe is.

The future of soccer will see it become a truly global sport.

In the 1890s, two Englishmen visited the remote Scottish island of South Uist. They brought with them a soccer ball. Within 20 years, Shinty – a traditional sport played on the island for 1,400 years – was wiped out. Soccer conquered South Uist like it had with populations around the world.

Traveling Brits introduced soccer to Europe, Africa and Latin America in the nineteenth century, but it’s only in the last twenty years that soccer became a truly global game.

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Worum geht es in Soccernomics?

Soccernomics (2009) applies economic and data analysis to explore the way the sport of soccer is played, watched and run. It explores everything from whether world cups make us happier to why Western Europe continues to dominate the sport globally. In the process, Soccernomics shows us that much of what we think about the world’s most popular sport is wrong.

Bestes Zitat aus Soccernomics

Soccer is not merely a small business. It has also historically been a bad one.

—Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

Wer Soccernomics lesen sollte

Fans of soccer everywhere
Readers interested in the behind-the-scenes reality of how soccer works
Anyone who wants to understand why some teams succeed and others don’t

Über den Autor

Simon Kuper is a renowned soccer writer. He writes for the Financial Times and has won the William Hill prize for sports book of the year. Stefan Szymanski is a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan.

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