he’s simply repeating an observation that the richest clubs tend to win more and that player salaries are a better independent variable than manager salaries in predicting team success. In fact, like Lewis does in moneyball, Kuper and Syzmanski in Soccernomics argue that certain players (and positions) are overvalued and some are undervalued (Kuper and Syzmanski, for instance, argue that goalkeepers are generally undervalued, while strikers are overvalued). They claim that some managers are better at recognizing these “inefficiencies” (Brian Clough is one of the Beene like heros of Soccernomics).

I saw Sigi, Kuper, and Arlo White at Town Hall last year and I get the impression that the Sounders are all in on technologies to better understand metrics that determine player performance.

This is what happens when people argue about things they don’t understand.

First, this is a critique of Kuper’s article by “footballgarden”. Kuper is a sports-writer, not an economist. Kuper was 1/2 of the team that wrote Soccernomics. Stefan Szymanski was the economist, not Kuper. In Soccernomics, Szymanski argus that the the market for footballers is INEFFICIENT and that smart managers can find these inefficiencies to gain competitive advantage

This is the exact opposite of what Kuper argues in his article (that the market is efficient). Kuper argues that Ferguson is a talented manager. Soccernomics (Szymanski) found a player-wages to be the number 1 predictor of wins in his regression analysis (Google it). He argues that Ferguson is NOT special because the amount ManU spends on wages compared to the rest of the league predicts that he wins trophies at the rate that he wins trophies. Clough is special because his teams won more than the amount he spent on players predicted.

Did Kuper understand his own book?

footballgarden then tries to disprove Kuper by attacking economics as a discipline and using the current state of the economy as proof. First, there’s very little relationship between what economists recommend and what the feds actually do. If there was a relationship, we would see a massive increase on spending on infrastructure. Second, economic relationships must be backed up by statistical analysis, which Szymanski does well. footballgarden sets up straw-men arguments and uses doubting, skeptical languange. These are not real arguments.

Neither of these two know what they’re talking about regarding economics. There’s not a single graph in either article!

I wrote the linked article. First off, I want to say thank you for Dave/Sounder at Heart Blog for linking to the piece and thanks for the commenters for reading and responding! Let me offer a couple of responses to the comments:

1. @Refuoe: From the FT article: “The market in footballers, unlike the market in managers, is frighteningly efficient.” There are some weird dissonant conclusions between the article and the book which is part of the reason I wanted to focus on the efficiency of the managerial market argument in the article and not discuss the player market efficiency argument discussed more in the book. That said, the article is about efficiency in managerial markets and the idea that the player market is efficient and appropriately valued is core to the conclusions they make about managers. I think this apparent contradiction speaks a little to Sammysounder’s comments.

2. @Sammysounder: I agree that there seem to be some inherent contradictions between the article and the book. I’m not sure it’s accurate to lay those all at the feet of Kuper though. While Syzmanski isn’t named as a co-author, Kuper uses “we” throughout the piece to describe the work and Syzmanksi’s lists of “overachieving” managers are linked to the piece. Ferguson is towards the top of those lists. Syzmanksi was doing the regression analysis. Kuper appears to be providing the color to the numbers. I just can’t agree that Kuper has gone “rogue” here and completely used and misinterpreted Syzmanki’s work without his approval.

The study of economics and economics theory has limitations, just like any other social discipline. It’s my personal opinion that the use of mathematics has caused many economic practitioners and their audience to disregard those limitations and treat economic theory akin to “laws of nature.” The saying goes something like: “Torture numbers enough and they’ll tell you what they want.”

On your last point, academic economics has multiple factions each with different beliefs about the appropriate role of government intervention. Keynesian infrastructure guys like Paul Krugman are in the less influential minority. Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summer and TIm Geithner, all academic economists, have had undeniable (and many would argue disproportionate) influence on federal fiscal and monetary policy over the last 20 years. I highly recommend Yves Smith’s book Econned and Charles Ferguson’s film Inside Job for more detailed discussion on that topic.

Enough geek talk though, my original point of the article was to challenge these ideas as a means to contribute something to our American soccer discourse. I tried to be a little playful with the way I described economic theory and I’m certainly not alone in my criticism of economics, but I did want to highlight what I perceive to be some gaps that need to be filled for this type of analysis to be really useful for us going forward. The overall theme of Football Garden is that U.S. Soccer will be mediocre until we have leadership with clear, communicable ideas that can be expressed in detail about how to play the game. Application of economic concepts to football is intellectually seductive, but I personally feel that there is a danger is reliance on statistics to shape a footballing philosophy. That’s what I hoped to convey in the piece.

Anyways, enough rambling. Thanks all again and please follow up with more feedback if you feel inspired!

-Jacques

I read Soccernomics and enjoyed it, but while the book is called soccernomics, but a more fitting title might have been soccer sociology. Specifically in regard to why countries have success in the world cup.

Other parts of soccernomics that was great imo was the idea of a team spending huge amounts for foreign transfers then not spending anything to help them re-locate and their performances dropping.

According to these guys then a salary capped league would be the only place where a true measure of coaching skill takes place since other then NYRB and LA the salaries are roughly the same.