Vacation Reading with Dave – Book One

The full title of this book is 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 by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szmanski.

In my last post I told you how I picked my vacation books. No, this book has little to do with church leadership and related factors, but then again….

OK, first off, you don’t have to love soccer to enjoy this book. I grew up playing and coaching my girls but I am not a huge fan of the game. I watch a few World Cup games every four years or so.

But as The Global Game I do think it is important for understanding many cultures.

The authors are two Brits so the focus is primarily on England and its reasons for always hoping for big international wins and usually being disappointed.

As the title suggests it is a combination of Soccer+Economics. But think of the book as well as Freakonomics meets Moneyball. I love economic explanations and I loved Moneyball as the way to find the facts that matter in selecting baseball teams. Moneyball challenged me to look at my own organization and at those I serve in new ways.

But back to Soccernomics – What this book examines is several questions about top level soccer and takes you back to the assumptions by which you think you can predict success or failure. Many of the commonly held beliefs are held up to statistical and other analysis to give some sense of what reality is.

The authors call Top Level Soccer – The Worst Business in the World. Despite the dollars flowing through it, as a profit making concern, very few investors win at this game.

“Over the past decade, people worried a lot more about the survival of soccer clubs than of banks. Yet it was many of the world’s largest banks that disappeared. The public perception that soccer clubs are inherently unstable businesses is wrong. Despite being incompetently run, they are some of the most stable businesses on earth.”

I couldn’t help but think of some of the churches I have worked with over the years. Despite all our concerns of decline, churches find ways to survive and carry on, similar to the clubs around the world.

There is also a great chapter on the export of soccer knowledge through networks from the core soccer powerhouses to other countries developing their teams. This mainly comes from a few Northern European teams that have developed the theory and techniques of play and training and then these are carried by those practitioners to other teams.

Finally the book shows again that open networks, free agency (think free trade) and the global television reach have aided greatly the development of the sport around the world. It helps to start with a sport that is simple, easy to teach and can be enjoyed by many. But add to that satellite television, the internet fan boards and players moving among continents to play for many different teams and then the base continues to grow.

As I reflect on the continued growth of Christianity around the globe we can see many similar factors.

Anyway, this is our affiliate link to the book. If you are going to watch the World Cup, I think you will enjoy this.

If you read it and want to dialogue about the book, feel free to comment here or send me an email to dave (dot) travis (at) leadnet (dot) org.

All the above links are affiliate links that benefit Leadership Network just so you know.

Dave Travis

Managing Director

Leadership Network

Comments

[Egil elling]

Cool, I just startes reading the book as a warm up to the world cup!