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Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution

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Format: Hardcover


Description

An in-depth examination of the rise of analytics in soccer and the wild experiments unfolding around the world in the beautiful game from ESPN staff writer and Infinite Football podcast host Ryan O’Hanlon. Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution takes readers on a tour across the world and throughout soccer history, introducing the many people who have attempted to shine a light onto and innovate a sport that, in many ways, is still stuck in the Dark Ages. This deep dive into the rise of analytics in soccer—a sport where tradition reigns supreme—shows how revolutionary tactics and underexplored metrics are breaking the beautiful game wide open. By exploring how massive institutions built on billions of dollars can function for so long without any kind of introspection—and what happens when people from the outside attempt to question the status quo—author Ryan O’Hanlon shows how time and again experts, managers, coaches, players, and fans feel they know the best approach for any given team or player, and yet get undermined by the complexity of the game—and human behavior. To tell this globe-trekking story, O’Hanlon takes readers inside the front offices and analytics departments of the top professional leagues’ most cutting-edge clubs and profiles a misfit cast of number-crunchers, behavioral economists, tech insiders, and managers all working to move beyond the philosophical side of soccer and uncover the hard truths behind possession, goals, and developing talent. “Ryan O’Hanlon pulls off a remarkable trick in Net Gains: he writes about the evolution of soccer in a way that somehow feels both romantic without being blind and analytical without being cold.” —1 New York Times bestselling author Shea Serrano Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harry N. Abrams (October 18, 2022)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1419758918


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 11


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #144,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #36 in Sports Industry #138 in Soccer (Books) #262 in Sports History (Books)


#36 in Sports Industry:


#138 in Soccer (Books):


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Brilliant storytelling combined with excellent analytics
A great read to hear about both the modern application of and background behind analytics in the beautiful game. Required reading for the modern football fan.
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2023 by Ty
    • One of the best, and most fascinating, books about the beautiful game
I love books about the business of soccer. I saw this and decided to take a chance on it. I am glad I did. First of all, the author is a fellow Long Islander, and had a similar path to my son in playing youth Soccer. That is covered as almost the preface of the book and was a good way to start it off. The book then takes off from there. Instead of bombarding you with stats and how the data for them is collected and applied to the beautiful game, O'Hanlon takes you on a journey through the years and continents (mainly Europe and North America) and looks at the way the game has grown, how stats and data analysis (and the people that support using them) have tried to fight their way to be used to improve clubs. This is hard to describe in a review but the cast of characters interviewed and covered in this book, from clubs, analysts, players, managers, front office people (some who have no experience even kicking a football) are all fascinating and help make this book very readable and one of the best books on the beautiful game I have read. If you are a true fan of the sport this is a must read. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2022 by E-LO
    • Definitive book on the subject
Really terrific read. Highly recommended as the definitive book on the use of data in soccer. Having read this and the recent Rory Smith book on the same subject, which is still inexplicably unavailable in the States, this is by far the better book. Great book.
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2023 by Amazon Customer
    • Must Read for World Cup Fans!
The author does a great job explaining the analytics and how they are utilized by the front office. I am first and foremost a baseball fan but still managed to follow the logic as it is presented in a very methodical but conversational tone. It is interspersed with some fun facts and even funnier tales from his youth. I highly recommend this book for fans of all sports. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2022 by Frank Adams
    • Supremely insightful on the burgeoning world of soccer analytics
O’Hanlon’s multi-disciplinary approach to presenting the short history of data analytics in soccer was eye opening and a tremendous primer to anyone interested in sports analytics.
Reviewed in the United States on October 29, 2022 by Sefton + Lucy
    • What We Talk About When We Talk About Sergio Busquets
This engaging history of soccer analytics is well worth picking up by anyone with the remotest interest in the topic. O'Hanlon opens the book by talking about his own career as a player who made it to the Division I college level, thus establishing his bona fides as someone who's thought about the game from a higher playing level than probably 0.1% of his readership. He then dives into a very readable history of efforts to use data to improve team performance, tactics, and player valuation, starting with the earliest rudimentary efforts of a few obsessives like Charles Reap in the 1950s and 60s. It's worth noting that the book somewhat in conversation with the work of Stefan Szymanski (Soccernomics), whose writings more or less say that the only analytic that you need to look at for club soccer is the payroll, which, anomalies like Leicester aside, predict success at a very high rate. As anyone who's followed soccer over the past decades knows, it isn't really until the last ten years that analytics really have taken hold throughout soccer. Some of that has to do with the same kinds of resistance to analytics other sports have seen (most famously recounted in the baseball book, Moneyball), but also the higher level of modeling complexity soccer involves. As a sport with 22 players moving without restriction, it's not until recently that the technology (cameras, GPS systems, cloud computing, etc.) has evolved to enable sophisticated modeling tools to be built. What becomes very clear over the course of his presentation of several personalities, bloggers, and teams, is that we are still in the early stages of soccer analytics. Some of the new metrics (such as Expected Goals) have been gaining currency, but the book provides plenty of case studies of where models and metrics aren't quite providing breakthroughs. For example, I quite liked the section where there is widespread agreement throughout soccer royalty that Sergio Busquets was an invaluable player, and yet there is no model or statistic that can really explain why. Readers who enjoy the stats and analytics of sports should definitely pick this up, as should anyone with a serious interest in soccer. It also works as a nice complement to the classic history of soccer tactics, Inverting the Pyramid. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2023 by A. Ross
    • A must read for any fan of the beautiful game
Super insightful read about the world's sport and it's constant evolution
Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2022 by E. Hefner

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