Archive for Reads
As The Message Spreads
Ben Knight
Ben Knight writes and publishes
Onward!
Soccernomics: Hope for the little guy?
You’re going to be hearing a lot about Soccernomics, the breakthrough study of soccer numbers by Simon Kuper (Soccer Against the Enemy) and economist Stefan Szymanski.
If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of why games are won and lost, and which clubs and nations are likeliest to prevail, just race right out and grab a copy now.
I have almost half an entire bookshelf devoted to Bill James, the legendary baseball stats wizard who changed every thinking person’s approach to baseball by actually counting everything up, and inventing new stats – on-base percentage – that actually correlated directly with on-field success.
Soccer, of course, doesn’t have nearly as many stats – but high-data computer programs like ProZone are already changing that.
Curious About Soccernomics, Read This Book
Putting the game under an analytical microscrope using statistics, economics, psychology and intuition to try and transform a dogmatic sport.
At this point, let’s agree to call the global game “soccer” and the American game “football.” Many people, both in American and Europe, imagine that soccer is an American term invented in the late twentieth century to distinguish the game from gridiron. Indeed, anti-American Europeans often frown on the use of th eword. They consider it a mark of American imperialism. This is a silly position. “Soccer was the most common name for the game in Britain from the 1890′s until the 1970′s. As far as one can tell, when the North American Soccer League brought soccer to the Americans in the 1970s, and Americans quite reasonably adopted the English word, the British stopped using it and reverted to the word football. We will compare soccer with football, and the readers will know what we mean.
Page 158 Excerpt
The Manager: Barney Ronay Asks The Important Questions
By Barney Ronay, The Guardian
How they used to be
Extracted from The Manager: The Absurd Ascent of the Most Important Man in Football by Barney Ronay
The manager first appeared in the late years of the 19th century, during the great flowering of soon-to-be-professional football clubs. Recruiting from the ranks of ex-players was out. At this stage there was no such thing as an ex-player. So managers were sourced from other industries, usually the senior ranks of manual labour, the factory clerk and shop steward.
Often, very little is known about these men. We do have photographs: blank, stern, narrow-eyed men in waistcoats and watch-chains. The best surviving likeness of Harry Newbould, manager of Manchester City in the early years of the last century, resembles a vaguely defeated provincial accountant (which he was).
Managers often worked seven days a week. It was a business of sleeper cars, boarding houses and the many mechanical perils of 19th-century domestic infrastructure.
Death on the job was common. John Nicholson, appointed Sheffield United secretary-manager in 1899, was run over and killed by a lorry on the way to a match. Sheffield Wednesday manager Robert Brown collapsed while boarding a train in March 1935, and Coventry City’s Dick Bayliss fell ill after a drive back from Southend during “the great freeze” of 1947.
Managers who died of the cold form a club of their own. Herbert Chapman succumbed to a chill a week after watching Arsenal’s third team play at Guildford one night in January 1934; Norwich manager James Kerr did the same a month later. On a more positive note, Millwall manager Bill Voisey survived a direct hit on the Den during a second world war air raid (he retired from his post with severe injuries).
In The Game Video
In the first of a six-part series, Barney Ronay looks at how Herbert Chapman transformed the role of the football coach from virtual secretary to integral component of the game.
An Epic Disaster
How Beckham Blew It
By Grant Wahl Sports Illustrated
After his five-month loan to Italian superclub AC Milan, David Beckham is expected back with the Los Angeles Galaxy and scheduled to play on July 16 against the New York Red Bulls at Giants Stadium. But when he takes the field the mood will be far less giddy than the one that heralded his arrival in the U.S. in 2007. In Beckham’s two years with the Galaxy he has successfully sold jerseys and served as celebrity eye candy, but the soccer story has been an epic disaster, from his injury-plagued season in ’07 through a loss-filled campaign in ’08.
Beckham’s side made sure he became team captain, and later they engaged in a behind-the-scenes takeover of Galaxy management. Yet L.A. failed to reach the MLS playoffs both years. By the end of the ’08 season Beckham was barely speaking to his teammate Landon Donovan, MLS’s leading scorer, who questioned the Englishman’s commitment to the team.
The Beckham Experiment is a story of worlds colliding, bringing together the planet’s most famous athlete with teammates who earned as little as $12,900 a year. But that inequity was only the start of a downward spiral that, on the eve of Beckham’s return, has turned into a soccer fiasco.
This article appears in the July 6, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated magazine.
Reprinted from The Beckham Experiment, by Grant Wahl. Copyright © 2009 by Grant Wahl. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House Inc.
