Interesting for stats geeks!

I found this mostly interesting as a big football fan, as well as a non-academic interest in stats, trends and analysing data!

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Brilliant

I loved all the interesting statistics throughout, the only thing that annoyed me was the way they kept on saying that a win percentage was .72% etc..... when it was actually 72%

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Misleading in places!

This was an interesting although subjective book. The narrative was engrossing but not all the 'facts' were presented in a balanced way, for example Spain during the Franco years is described as isolationist and this is seen as a negative factor in football evolution yet the amazing Real Madrid side of the late fifties and early sixties didn't get a mention. I also doubt that having fewer English players in the Premier league would improve the situation of Englands poor record in world football since Spain use mainly spanish-based players in their world conquering team. Overall it was an interesting book but not really one I would pay attention to.

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Better off reading it

This book is brilliant, but the problem is it has a lot of tables that convert horribly to audio.

There is one table that takes about 6 minutes to read out.

Given the amount of data involved in the book I think you are much better off reading it than listening to it.

That said it's incredibly interesting.

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5 people found this helpful

One for Football Fans

great listening and performance from Colin Mace very interesting book. need updating to the latest edition.

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If you follow football, you'll love this

This is a terrific analysis of football making some serious and clever points in a very likeable dry-witted style. The great thing about it as an audiobook is that it will bear several listens to take in the many salient points. Thoroughly recommended.

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Freakonomics meets football

I thought this was excellent. A statistician's view of football might put you off but this is in the same vein as Freakonomics - often counter-intuitive findings on football based on statistics. It has to be said that some of the findings in Freakonomics were subsequently hotly contested and the same may well be true for this book but it is certainly thought provoking. One word of warning (okay many words) - the book contains many tables of data which do not lend themselves to the audio book format. They do have a certain hypnotic quality, like listening to the weather station reports late in the evening. They should really have supplied a pdf with the audiobook containing the data.

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2 people found this helpful

Excellent, especially if you is a nerd

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I know allot of nerds. Need to write more to get to the 15 words.

Who was your favorite character and why?

NA

Which character – as performed by Colin Mace – was your favourite?

NA

Any additional comments?

No

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Insightful

I've talked about the findings of this book more than any other. It charts plausible data and trends that actually endorses why England have over performed.

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Interesting but probably better in print

Contains some interesting insights, though some already feel a bit outdated as was written when capello was in charge of England. Most annoyingly the book contains multiple statistical tables read out line by line - this can take many minutes each time, is tedious and adds no value really. Would be much better to have reference pdf and just summarise in the voiceover.

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2 people found this helpful