Money and Soccer: A Soccernomics Guide

On the heels of 2012’s bestselling Soccernomics (cowritten by Simon Kuper), Szymanski uses his academic’s understanding of sports management and economics to break down the world’s most popular sport via the global common denominator of money. To show the ways in which money effects different strata of clubs and nations, Szymanski includes graphs and charts and featuring diagnostic prose peppered with phrases like “zero-profit equilibrium, “data transformations,” and “logarithm of wage spending.” Soccer fans looking to nerd out on the financial aspects of winning and losing, as well as how the growth of pro sports effect the globalization of soccer, will find plenty to like here. Some of Szymanski’s observations are obvious (he notes that “monumental spending is an effective formula for winning championships”) but readers will appreciate the thorough research behind them. [em](June) [/em]