Soccernomics : why England loses, why Germany and Brazil win, and why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey, and even Iraq, are destined to become the kings of the world's most popular sport

A good read, which definitely stands out to other football-related books out there. Also, many theories still hold up to this day. Another neat aspect is, that nearly all of the author‘s claims are backed by numbers and statistical models. But sometimes their methodology and weighting scheme seemed to be arbitrarily chosen (why was the World Cup 10x more important than some other competition?). Also, like mentioned by others, it felt a bit long-ish in some chapters, in a sense that those could have been more condensed.

While there are some really interesting facts in the book, it might have been well served with a shorter version. There's a lot of data in the book, that is well worth a look and makes excellent point, but a lot of the book is just anecdotal and fillers. If this book was 1/3rd smaller and less repetetive, i might have enjoyed it more.

Nevertheless, i still think it has a lot of useful information and tidbits for any lovers of football and statistics.

I found the chapters on economic analysis of team cashflow, as well as the analysis on hosting world sporting events the most interesting. Entertaining and thought provoking book!