Book #37 for 2023: Why England Lose by Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski
Why England Lose: And other curious phenomena explained by Kuper, Simon, Szymanski, Stefan (2009) Hardcover by Simon Kuper
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An interesting blind read, all about strange quirks and oddities about football.
It isn't, as the title suggests, all about the reasons for England's continual lack of success, which the writers fail to explain, stating that there is no clear pattern to the national team's losses.
The arguments put forward in this book would probably only appeal to "hardcore" football fans, but the writers did make some interesting points. For example, football teams from Capital Cities tend not to be the most successful in their national league, but teams from industrial cities do, explaining the success of Manchester United. The writers also note that Europe tends to dominate in football successes, and that the ability of football teams often affects a national team's success. The book even analyses the backgrounds of footballers, including their fathers' professions, as well as providing an explanation about why many good footballers come from poor neighbourhoods, which is probably true.
The only real issue I had with this book was that a lot of the time, it felt like a list of statistics being rattled off by the writers. It was written over ten years ago, and most of what is in it still feels accurate, bar a couple of things.
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