Soccernomics QUOTES

21 " Joiner’s article “On Buckeyes, Gators, Super Bowl Sunday, and the Miracle on Ice” makes a strong case that it’s not the winning that counts but the taking part—the shared experience. It is true that he found fewer suicides in Columbus, Ohio, and Gainesville, Florida, in the years when the local college football teams did well. But Joiner argues that this is because fans of winning teams “pull together” more: they wear the team shirt more often, watch games together in bars, talk about the team, and so on, much as happens in a European country while the national team is playing in a World Cup. The “pulling together” saves people from suicide, not the winning. Proof of this is that Joiner found fewer suicides in the US on Super Bowl Sundays than on other Sundays at that time of year, even though few of the Americans who watch the Super Bowl are passionate supporters of either team. What they get from the day’s parties is a sense of belonging. That is the lifesaver. In Europe today, there may be nothing that brings a society together like a World Cup with your team in it. For once, almost everyone in the country is watching the same TV programs and talking about them at work the next day, just as Europeans used to do thirty years ago before they got cable TV. Part of the point of watching a World Cup is that almost everyone else is watching, too. Isolated people—the types at most risk of suicide—are suddenly welcomed into the national conversation. They "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

23 " The things we once thought of as luxuries soon become necessities (although, by the same token, our sense of well-being would quickly adapt to losing half our income). What we care about is not our absolute wealth but our rung on the ladder. Ruut Veenhoven, a leading researcher of happiness, says, “When we have overtaken the Joneses, our reference drifts upward to the Smiths, and we feel unhappy again. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

25 " If he had merely balanced his transfer budget in that period, let alone made a profit as Wenger did, he could have raised his team’s salaries by $36 million a year. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

27 " If you work for a soccer club, your goal is generally to keep working there, not to be shown up by some overeducated young thing who has actually learned something about business. In part this is because much of the traditionally working-class soccer industry distrusted education. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

29 " in business doing nothing is often the hardest thing. (And not just in business. Harold Macmillan, prime minister during the Cuban missile crisis, mused then ‘on the frightful desire to do something, with the knowledge that not to do anything was prob. the right answer’.) "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

31 " Apparently the Germans had a database of 13,000 kicks. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

33 " He hadn’t played, so if there really was some kind of mystical knowledge you gained from playing, he wouldn’t know. Usually he would back down. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

35 " There is no evidence that having been a good player (or being white and of conservative appearance) is an advantage for a soccer manager. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

37 " Взять, например, «Манчестер Юнайтед» — наверняка тысячи фанатов по всему миру и знать не знают, что Манчестер — это такой город в Англии. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics

39 " Experience as a player can help you just in one situation: I can understand what the players are thinking. But the job is different. You have to study to be a manager. "

― Simon Kuper , Soccernomics