Journalist Simon Kuper and sports economist Stefan Szymanski examine professional football, past and present, to understand the sociology and science behind it.

Could football be, at least in part, a game of numbers?

Football is an emotive sport, but behind that passion lie millions of data points that can be analyzed to understand how teams can deliver better results.

Journalist Simon Kuper and sports economist Stefan Szymanski co-authored Soccernomics to demonstrate the power of statistics in explaining and predicting outcomes for football players and their teams.

The authors run a data consultancy business advising football clubs and federations. Since its first edition in 2009, their book has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide.

In this edition, updated for the 2022 World Cup, Kuper and Szymanski draw on academic research and various data sets to understand the game's history and argue that 'big data' is one of football's most powerful tools.