Moneyball meets Freakonomics in this myth-busting guide to understanding—and winning—the most popular sport on the planet. Innovation is coming to soccer, and at the center of it all are the numbers—a way of thinking about the game that ignores the obvious in favor of how things actually are. In The Numbers Game, Chris Anderson, a former professional goalkeeper turned soccer statistics guru, teams up with behavioral analyst David Sally to uncover the numbers that really matter when it comes to predicting a winner. Investigating basic but profound questions—How valuable are corners? Which goal matters most? Is possession really nine-tenths of the law? How should a player’s value be judged?—they deliver an incisive, revolutionary new way of watching and understanding soccer.
With every hit, ball, strike, and home run numbers are being calculated on the baseball field. Get ready to learn all the ways digits and math factor into the game, from the countless statistics used to measure an individual player's game to the exact timing used to steal a base. Read about all the greatest players from baseball history and get fun facts, like what the most retired jersey number is. Discover what countries dominate in the Little League World Series and check out cool graphics that show the frequency of hits to every part of the field. Jam-packed with sports trivia, awesome photos, and fun activities at the end of every chapter, this number-focused look at the game is the ultimate grand slam.
"This next book in the It's a Numbers Game series explains the math behind football and highlights the game's greatest stats and numbers history from college ball, to the CFL, to the NFL"--
'Football looked at in a very different way' Pat Nevin, former Chelsea and Everton star and football media analyst Football – the most mathematical of sports. From shot statistics and league tables to the geometry of passing and managerial strategy, the modern game is filled with numbers, patterns and shapes. How do we make sense of them? The answer lies in the mathematical models applied in biology, physics and economics. Soccermatics brings football and mathematics together in a mind-bending synthesis, using numbers to help reveal the inner workings of the beautiful game. This new and expanded edition analyses the current big-name players and teams using mathematics, and meets the professionals working inside football who use numbers and statistics to boost performance. Welcome to the world of mathematical modelling, expressed brilliantly by David Sumpter through the prism of football. No matter who you follow – from your local non-league side to the big boys of the Premiership, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A or the MLS – you'll be amazed at what mathematics has to teach us about the world's favourite sport.
Through stunning infographics and high-quality illustrations, the world of soccer is brought to life. Full of facts and stats, players and personalities, this is the beautiful game as you have never seen it before. Whether it is uncovering the most goals scored in an international tournament, or comparing the left-foot of the world's best players, the intriguing and often surprising truths of soccer are uncovered. From the legend-makers Brazil and their world cup wins, the tallest and shortest players to have graced the game, to pitting the top players against each others, these striking and fun infographics put the game's most intriguing questions to the test. Who has scored more from the penalty spot, Ronaldo or Messi? Which goalie has the safest hands? Who has received the most red cards?
On the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. How will a group of Thai boys play soccer? After watching the World Cup on television, a group of Thai boys is inspired to form their own team. But on the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. The boys can play only twice a month on a sandbar when the tide is low enough. Everything changes when the teens join together to build their very own floating soccer field. This inspiring true story by debut author Scott Riley is gorgeously illustrated by Nguyen Quang and Kim Lien. Perfect for fans of stories about sports, beating seemingly impossible odds, and places and cultures not often shown in picture books. "A compelling book for football [soccer] fans and readers seeking examples of ingenuity."—starred, Publishers Weekly
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
