Simon Kuper Boeken

With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world--and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world's highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF--and by one earlier measure, more than all thirty-two NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is "More than a club." But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club's two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time. Messi joined Bar�a at age thirteen and, more than anyone, has been the engine and standard-bearer of Barcelona's glory. But his era is coming to an end--and with it, a once-in-a-lifetime golden run. This book charts Bar�a's rise and fall.Like many world-beating organizations, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders access to the Camp Nou, its legendary home stadium. But after decades of writing about the sport and the club, Kuper was given access to the inner sanctum and the people behind the scenes who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top. Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond soccer to understand FC Barcelona as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.

Imagine the club not as a theatre of dreams but as a workplace. What is office life like day to day? Who are the people who run the club? How much power do they actually have over the players? What should the players eat, and how can you persuade them to eat it? From the author of bestselling Soccernomics comes a book that will reshape our understanding of football and the world's most talked-about club: FC Barcelona. After 30 years of unprecedented access, this book takes the reader behind closed doors into the changing room, the training ground and the boardroom to reveal the real stories behind Barca's rise to global sports superpower - and its recent fall from grace. It includes interviews with the towering personalities responsible for transforming Barca including Johan Cruyff and Pep Guardiola. It details the work of coaches, medics, data analysts and nutritionists, as well as extraordinary players like Lionel Messi, in building not just a club but a football philosophy. It analyses the unique structure of Barca from the Catalan power politics at the top, the cutting-edge sports science hub it has created and its legendary youth academy known as La Masia. This is truly a book decades in the making, which establishes how an army of coaches, medics, data analysts and nutritionists have built the foundations for one of the outstanding successes of the modern game.

Through a blend of memoir and anthropology, the author reflects on his two decades in Paris, navigating its complexities and transformations. He shares personal experiences, from enjoying local life to enduring significant events like terrorist attacks and social upheaval. The narrative captures Paris as both a multicultural haven and a city facing challenges, including gentrification and climate crises. As the city prepares for the Olympics and the Grand Paris project, the memoir offers a fresh perspective on contemporary urban life, free from clichés.

The 2018 World Cup edition of the international bestseller and "the most intelligent book ever written about soccer" (San Francisco Chronicle) is updated throughout and features new chapters on the FIFA scandal, why Iceland wins, and women's soccer. Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Guardian, Slate, Financial Times, Independent (UK), and Bloomberg News Written with an economist's brain and a soccer writer's skill, Soccernomics applies high-powered analytical tools to everyday soccer topics, looking at data and revealing counterintuitive truths about the world's most beloved game. It all adds up to a revolutionary new approach that has helped change the way the game is played. This World Cup edition features ample new material, including fresh insights into FIFA's corruption, the surge in domestic violence during World Cups, and Western Europe's unprecedented dominance of global soccer.

An intelligent and penetrating series of articles profiling the great sporting figures of our time, from William Hill Prize-winning author Simon Kuper

'Soccernomics' applies high-powered analytical tools to everyday football topics. It's about looking at data in new ways, revealing counterintuitive truths about football and explaining all manner of things about the game which newspapers just can't see.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Oxford has produced most of the prominent Conservative politicians of our time. The university newspapers of thirty years ago are full of recognisable names in news stories, photos of social events, and Bullingdon Club reports. Many walked straight out of the world of student debates onto the national stage. Unfortunately, they brought their university politics with them.Eleven of the fifteen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford. This narrowest of talent pools has shaped the modern country. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Oxford University - and the friendships and worldviews it created - helped give us today's Britain, including Brexit.

The classic winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. schovat popis

A biography of George Blake, the most notorious double agent in British history, who just died in Moscow.

Soccer is much more than just the most popular game in the world. It is a matter of life and death for millions around the world, an international lingua franca. Simon Kuper traveled to twenty-two countries to discover the sometimes bizarre effect soccer can have on politics and culture. At the same time he tried to discover what makes different countries play a simple game so differently. Kuper meets a remarkable variety of fans along the way, from the East Berliner persecuted by the Stasi for supporting his local team, to the Argentine general with his own views on tactics. He also illuminates the frightening intersection between soccer and politics, particularly in the wake of the attacks of 9-11, where soccer is obsessed over by the likes of Osama bin Laden. The result is one of the world's most acclaimed books on the game, and an astonishing study of soccer and its place in the world.