Soccernomics (2022 World Cup Edition‪)‬

‘Magnificent… Freakonomics for football’ – Guardian

Football truly is the world’s favourite game, followed in over 200 countries by hundreds of millions of people pouring their hearts and souls into supporting their chosen team every week.

But behind the passion are questions that all true football aficionados want answered: has football spending spun out of control? How much do managers matter? Is hosting a World Cup a poisoned chalice?

Fully revised and updated ahead of the 2022 World Cup, Soccernomics is the revolutionary guide from an economist and a sports writer who answer all these questions and more.

Reviews

‘an Arsène Wenger of a book – more thoughtful than most of its rivals and, by football standards, positively intellectual.' The Times

‘Soccernomics is the intellectual's guide to football, written for the layman. No matter what nation, club (or even sport, really) you support, you'll walk away from this book with an insightful new point of view that will cause you to never look at the game quite the same way again.’ Bleacher Report

‘…the author Simon Kuper and the economist Stefan Szymanski do for soccer what “Moneyball” did for baseball.’ New York Times

‘Every page engages, entertains and challenges the lazy assumptions that still dominate football, not merely in its punditry, but all too often in the way that clubs are run.' FourFourTwo

About the author

Simon Kuper's first book, Football Against the Enemy, won the 1994 William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize and is widely acknowledged as one of football's seminal books. Simon writes a weekly sports column in the Financial Times and has previously written football columns for The Times and The Observer.
Stefan Szymanski is Professor of Economics and MBA Dean at Cass Business School in London. Stefan has a global reputation and has acted as a consultant to government and to major sports organisations such as the FIA (motor sport), UEFA (football) and the ICC (cricket).