World Cup Final 2010 : Netherlands vs Spain

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_USzog_GOzyA/SqBpZTWAPsI/AAAAAAAAMDU/rrvJgNtpVFs/s400/lose.jpg

Book review:
Why England Lose or Soccernomics (title seems to differ by country)
Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski

This was mentioned a few weeks back, so I checked it out. It's a kind of pop-economics approach to football, covering four broad areas:
- a micro view of clubs as a business
- an analysis of how certain competitions have developed and why
- how supporters behave
- the international game

They use some statistics in support of their arguments, but mostly the approach is theory with anecdotes. The problem is that it hasn't been done very rigorously. International performance is assessed using win percentage, for example, so Spain are shown massively improving in the last two decades - but there's no mention in this context of politics having dumped a dozen or more weak teams into UEFA since 1990, when it seems obvious that anyone decent should now be guaranteed winning a quarter of their games, which wasn't the case before. Some stats are obviously just made up, like the proof as to which is the sportiest nation on earth.

That said, some uses of statistics struck me as really clever, like using wage bills to identify racism in the English game (if black players are discriminated against, they will get paid less - hence look at pairs of clubs with similar wage bills - if the one with more black players achieves higher, that's proof of racism - shows it was prevalent up until about 1990, before fading out). And the anecdotal stuff can be really good, like the chapter on penalty technique and game theory. Ultimately, though, there simply aren't enough of either - you never find out which clubs were the racist ones or equality pioneers, you don't know how selective the stats were, and the anecdotes seem thin because you can always think of a counter-example.

Stylistically as well, it's a bit of a mess. When the point is to overturn received wisdom, it's really annoying to find exactly that in non-football areas. Every mention of Iceland is immediately followed by reference to a collapsed economy (wealth strongly correlating with performance) - maybe they are starving in Reykjavik now, though I doubt it. That gag is even made twice in one paragraph, infuriatingly.

In summary, it's interesting enough, but not really very good. It's a shame, because I think that the idea is terrific - football is such a huge and colourful subject that there must be a test for every variable and an interesting anecdote to match, so you could write something that is entertaining while also going pretty deep. But this isn't it.

I've been reading that, too. Don't understand the logic behind counting a draw as 'half a win', though, in some of the stats at the beginning of the book. Am I being thick?

I suppose it makes as much sense as anything (draw as one-third of a win might've made equal sense) - it's just another thing that's never explained. For a book which is trying to debunk myths through numbers, using such loose starting-points makes it all seem rather slack.

That said, I really liked a lot of the conclusions, they mostly make intuitive sense. It just feels like you have to take them on faith more than you should - not a problem for me as I think about the game a lot myself anyway, but seems less ideal for those with a casual interest, which is who the book is presumably aimed at.

I watched the Man Utd-Chelsea shootout on Youtube after reading that chapter on penalties/game theory. Fascinating stuff.

Any other good football books? I read Inverting The Pyramid but must admit, as interesting as it was, I kind of wanted to just read about the tactics and not about some dude who invented them.

I'm trying to get onto a bit of a roll at the moment - started Jonathan Wilson's new book, The Anatomy of England, last night after I finished that one. I didn't get very far - I was knackered and really had to go to sleep - but it had me gripped immediately. He just writes so much better. I only read the prologue and a bit of the first chapter but it's of a totally different order in quality. The way he mixes personal experiences (his own and others') with tightly-edited facts from lots of different sources make it so much more entertaining and easier to read than Why England Lose, even though it's much denser and probably more difficult.

It's almost totally historical though - the idea being that ten famous international games from 1929 to 2007 each reveal lessons about the English game - so might not be what you're after.

I'll give that a go, thanks. Futebol: The Brazilian Way Of Life by Alex Bellos is supposed to be really good. I've had it on my shelf for ages but still haven't got round to reading it.

I've never really been able to get into books on foreign football cultures for some reason, at least not since I was little and read things about the really big stars. I have ones on German footy and this encyclopaedic thing on the global game, but never tempted to open them. I just ordered one on the development of soccer in the US, hopefully with loads of stuff on the early days when it was a big sport - with any luck that'll break the jam.

i liked The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro. i think i spelled that right. it's more of a personal story, but it gives pretty good insight into lower-league italian football and what it can mean to a small community.

Ismael, what's the US book?

Soccer In A Football World by David Wangerin. Have you read it? Can't remember where I heard about it - you are a likely suspect, come to think!

Nope, never heard of it until now. I'll definitely be tracking down a copy, though.

"Just bringing boys and girls together, organising schooling and health education, providing the tools to fight poverty and disease – that is the legacy we want to leave," said Sepp Blatter at the start of the World Cup. But one week after it finished, legacy-seeking press focus has stayed on Fifa's other big win: its estimated £2bn tax-free profit.

The latest stories around the ethical set-up of the tournament concern the already controversial Jabulani ball. It was written off as "inadequate" by Gianluigi Buffon, and Robinho said: "The guy that designed it never played football." But the aerodynamics probably weren't top priority for Pakistani workers stitching for Adidas, being paid less than £1.85 a day, say the International Labour Rights Forum. That's less than £50 a month.

Reports about the ball follow similar stories surrounding official replicas of the World Cup mascot, Zakumi, produced in China with factory workers earning £1.90 a day, while Nike had its World Cup replica kits made by workers in Jakarta, paid £3 a day.

"'The World Cup succeeded in highlighting many of the positive aspects of the African continent," says Will Prochaska, director of Alive & Kicking, a charity making balls in Africa in Fairtrade conditions. "But if Fifa had decided to run the tournament ethically instead, by supplying balls and merchandise from African businesses and social enterprises, then it could have saved itself the hassle of its legacy programme because the tournament would have helped generate a considerable socioeconomic boost to the region by itself."

Media focus remains, too, on the fallout from stringent laws Fifa required South Africa to pass preventing locals from producing products related to the tournament. Fifa lawyers warned: "Those attempting to benefit from the publicity surrounding the 2010 Fifa World Cup without paying sponsorship fees could land themselves in very hot water" – and were true to their word.

One "ambush marketing" case involved a lollipop maker being dragged through the courts for calling a sweet "The 2010 Pop", while, as reported last week, a Port Elizabeth bar owner was threatened with a £4,500 fine for putting up posters reading "The Phoenix Hotel and Stage Door pub welcomes the world to the World Cup". A restaurant owner, meanwhile, was threatened with jail for writing "2010" on a football and putting it in his window. "They tried to take advantage," Fifa said.

stringent laws Fifa required South Africa to pass preventing locals from producing products related to the tournament

Do you know any more about this? I couldn't understand what those dutch girls in the beer outfits were up in court for - I mean, what country has criminal laws against wearing things with adverts on them? Would be interested in knowing what FIFA's hosting requirements actually are.

dunno, i just c&p the guardian article about cunty fifa.

they have an 'exclusion zone' that goes for a couple hundred yards or something (maybe more i cant recall) around every WC stadium where it's prohibited to display/advertise/think about undesignated FIFA partners or something.

The funny thing is that under the FIFA Special Measures Act the commercial display areas inside and outside the stadiums and the official FIFA Fan Parks could only sell products of the official FIFA sponsors Budweiser, McDonald's and the rest, but the corporate hospitality suites inside the stadiums could serve whatever the fuck brands they wanted.

Would have loved to have seen Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger tucking into a pre-match Bud Light and Fillet O'Fish each.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8849972.stm

The French Football Federation has suspended all 23 members of France's World Cup squad for their next game.

should have just sat them all at the centre circle at half time to tell them off?

Stay classy, FIFA.

http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/08/14/nyheter/fifa/billetter/svartebors/12953681/

Dagbladet can reveal that confidential lists with personal data concerning at least 60 000 ticket holders has been sold on the black market — by a trusted employee in the FIFA system.

The lists Dagbladet is in possession of contain the full name, date of birth and passport number of the unknowing ticket buyers — as well as detailed information about which games they had tickets to, and where they were seated.

Oh, Bellend:

Sepp Blatter says Fifa is considering scrapping draws at the group stage of future World Cup finals by introducing penalty shoot-outs after 90 minutes.

Aw look Blatter, can't you just let one of us look after this thing? You can still go to the banquets and everything.

Someone stop him. Please.

all that'd do is force overmatched and/or offensively challenged teams to lay back all match to force a 0-0 draw and go to penalties.