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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, but then I love books that combine a story with data. This is Moneyball for soccer. Just like its full 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, the book is exhaustive in content as well.

Simon Kuper (prolific writer) and Stefan Szymanski (professor of economics) decided to look at various commonly held beliefs about the beautiful game in terms of economic data and population statistics to find (1) if those beliefs were indeed true, and (2) correlations between performance on the field and a country’s cultural and economic factors. Many of the results do end up sounding counterintuitive but its hard to argue with the data.
Just as Freakonomics turns conventional wisdom on its head, Soccernomics explores similar questions about soccer. Here are some things I remember from the book:

1. The country that loves soccer the most is Norway.

2. The Nick Hornby model of fandom (being devoted to one team all your life) is a British myth. Most Britons, who stay football fans their whole lives, will change allegiances at least once in their life.

3. Brits like to make fun of Americans for calling the game “soccer”. However, “soccer” was the most common name for the game, even in Britain, from the 1890′s all the way into the 1970′s. When the NASL started in American in the 1970′s, Americans adopted the English word and the Brits stopped using it, reverting to the word “football”.

4. Comparisons are often made between the NFL’s parity and the Premiere League’s domination by a small number of teams. The data shows that the NFL is only slightly more “fair” than the Premiere league (actually, parity does not equate to a balanced league at all) and its shown that attendance rises, in both England and the US, when leagues are seen to be less balanced.

5. David Beckham cannot elevate American soccer by playing for the Galaxy. American soccer is alive and well on fields all over the USA every weekend and lying on the sofa watching the Premiere league on Fox Soccer Channel.

6. Hosting a World Cup is not a way to improve a country’s infrastructure, make money, or open up your country to tourism. It is simply a way to improve your population’s “happy index” for a couple of months in a given year.

7. There is a good chance that Iraq could win the World Cup someday.

8. The US Men’s National team are radical under-acheivers. If our country ever got it’s act together and paid more attention to soccer, we would become the best soccer nation in the world.

9. Honduras is the most over-acheiving team on the planet. Given their resources and population, they shouldn’t be as good as they are.

10. For a country to become a successful soccer nation, it takes experience, population, and wealth. In order for a country to win a major award (World Cup, European Championship, etc.) there is one rule: the minimum average income per person is fifteen thousand dollars. There is one exception to this rule: Brazil.

Don’t think that this list of anywhere exhaustive. Nor does my list go into the detailed analysis that Kuper and Szymanski write so eloquently about. I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially those who have some interest in “cultural things” and want to expand their thinking. Don’t worry about knowing soccer or economics. This is just a plain good story that reveals some commonly held misconceptions.

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