David Sally onderzoekt de strategieën en tactieken die individuen toepassen bij spel, concurrentie, onderhandeling en besluitvorming. Als voormalig professioneel honkbalwerper en professor aan Dartmouth College brengt hij een uniek perspectief vanuit zowel sport als zakenwereld. Zijn expertise richt zich op de psychologie van concurrentie en hoe besluitvormingsprocessen kunnen worden verbeterd. Sally is ook een gewaardeerde adviseur binnen de mondiale voetbalindustrie.
"For the last twenty years, David Sally has taught negotiation at ... business schools and to executives at ... companies worldwide, and now he wants to share his secrets and the science behind them. Negotiation, he argues, is best thought of as a strategic game in which you should be exactly one step ahead of your opponent. Drawing parallels to everything from the NBA to the corner con game and rooted in Sally's own ... research, [his book] introduces a revolutionary way of approaching negotiation"--
Football has always been a numbers game- 4-4-2, the big number 9, and 3 points for a win. But what if up until now we've been focusing on the wrong numbers? What if the numbers that really matter, the ones that hold the key to winning matches, are actually 2.66, 53.4,50/50 and 0 > 1? What if managers only make a 15 per cent difference? What if Chelsea should have bought Darren Bent? In this incisive, myth-busting book, Chris Anderson, former goalkeeper turned football-statistics guru, and David Sally, former baseball pitcher turned behavioural economist, show that every shred of knowledge we can gather can help us to love football and understand it even more. You'll discover why stopping a goal is more valuable than scoring one, why corners should be taken short, and why it is better to improve your worst player than to buy a superstar. 'Chris Anderson and David Sally have the ability to see football in a way few have before them. Be warned- The Numbers Gamewill change the way you think about your favourite team or player, and change the way you watch the beautiful game.' Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A's, the subject of Moneyball 'A fascinating and stylish investigation into a rapidly developing way of understanding football.' Jonathan Wilson, author of Inverting the Pyramid- The History of Football Tactics
Tato publikace je brilantní analýzou krásné hry jménem fotbal, analýzou bořící zažité mýty, dogmata a praktiky. V žádném případě však nejde o nudná statistická data, naopak - autor na základě dlouholetého zkoumání odhaluje pravé příčiny fotbalového úspěchu. Bez nadsázky jde o "povinnou četbu" pro trenéry, hráče, fanoušky i sázkaře.
