Game for geeks

All football fans all sports fans,come to that are obsessed with numbers. They might not admit it: who wants to be called a statto or a geek just for knowing....

All football fans all sports fans,come to that are obsessed with numbers. They might not admit it: who wants to be called a statto or a geek just for knowing,say,how many league goals Rickie Lambert scored for Bristol Rovers last season? Since you ask: 29. But they are chasing data all the time. Scrutiny of the league table; glances at the watch as the final whistle nears; nervous inquiries about the score: all are quests for numbers.

Yet data do not merely describe. Make them sweat a little,and they will reveal deeper truths about football soccer,if you prefer. That is the claim of Simon Kuper,a columnist for the Financial Times,and Stefan Szymanski,an economist who specialises in sport. They combine their skills to entertaining and mostly convincing effect.

The authors skewer a few pieces of lazily received wisdom. One is that football is big business. Hmm. The turnover of Manchester United is dwarfed by that of BBA Aviation,a British firm that not many readers may have heard of. Another is that fans are loyal die-hards. The authors calculate the average proportion of English fans who are sure to watch their club next season: about half. People move to other towns. They have families. They reward success and shun failure.

A third myth is that clubs cannot buy success. They can,so long as they spend on players wages rather than on transfers. Almost 90 per cent of the variation in the positions of leading English teams is explained by wage bills. Transfer fees contribute little. New managers hoping to make their mark often waste money. Stars of recent World Cups or European championships are overrated. So are older players. So,curiously,are Brazilians and blonds.

It is possible to play the market wisely,by treating players in a similar way to stocks and shares: buy them before their prime early 20s is best and sell them the moment another club offers more than you think they are worth. Olympique Lyonnais,champions of France every year from 2002 to 2008,worked this out. So,earlier,did Arsenal,whose manager,Arsène Wenger,is obsessed with statistics. He also has a masters degree in economics.

There is much else in the book,such as why staging big tournaments may make countries happy but not rich; and why provincial cities provide more than their fair share of Europes champion clubs. Perhaps the best chapter for football-obsessed economists,anyway analyses penalty kicks as public exercises in non-co-operative game theory: the authors speculate that an economists advice about Manchester Uniteds goalkeeper might,with luck,have won Chelsea the European Champions League in 2008. The least convincing is an attempt to rank countries by their enthusiasm for football. Norway comes top,which may be right.

As for the title,why do England lose? The answer is that they dont lose all that often,despite a meagre tally of one World Cup,43 years ago,and no European championships. In fact,the national team does a little better than you would expect,given the countrys size,wealth and experience in international football. Fans hope for more. The data,alas,are against them.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009