Why England Lose

And Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained

De: Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski

Narrado por: Colin Mace

Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn’t America play the sport internationally… and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style?

Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, "Why England Lose" reveals the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about soccer.

No training in economics is needed to read Why England Lose. But the listener will come away from it with a better understanding not just of football, but of how economists think and why they know.

©2009 Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (P)2010 Audible Ltd

Reseñas de la Crítica

" Why England Lose is an Arsene Wenger of a book - more thoughtful than most of its rivals and, by football standards, positively intellectual." ( The Times)

"It is rare, even after the great leaps football literature has taken in the past two decades, to find a book that takes the breath away, but Why England Lose does. 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)

audible spreadsheet.

This book provided me with some extremely fascinating views on football in general and make me realize that England can't win a world cup. The reading out, at length, of spreadsheets with hundreds of data entries makes this book unbearably boring in parts.

Good, not great

What did you like best about Why England Lose? What did you like least?

a) A book of stats, tables and numbers, this does not translate very well to audio
b) Cannot fault the narrator, he does a good job
c) The content is new, fresh and innovative. A book like this should have been written a long time ago. Kuper is a legend, of course.... 'Football with the enemy' remains one of my favorite sports books.
d) The content is also the bane. I believe the authors try to say too many thing in this book. What's covered here has the material for maybe three books.... Therefore, there are individual chapters of impeccable analysis and brilliant insight, and other rather tepid ones.

As a book, it is somewhere down the middle. And for all the people who say that football (soccer) is too low scoring, too random and too fast / continuous even, to be figured out via stats, you are wrong. They said similar stuff about baseball before Bill James.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Colin Mace?

Yes.