Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution Kindle Edition

Football Hackers: The Science and Art of a Data Revolution (2019) by Christoph Bierman is an excellent read about the modern application of statistics to soccer. Soccer, or football as it will be referred to from here on, is very difficult to apply statistics to. Possession, shots taken and passed made can all be deceptive.Prior to the modern era of ubiquitous digital footage of thousands of games and the availability of cheap computing power coming up with better football statistics has not been possible. Charles Reep’s simplistic counting of passes being the best known failed example. But today with annotations available for thousands of games a year being done more sophisticated analysis has become possible.In the book Bierman talks to a number of modern football statistics innovators and describes their influence on the modern game. To anyone who is familiar with these ideas the first new metric Xg or expected goals should be familiar. But other concepts such as ‘packing’, PPDA, dangerousity and others are likely to be new. The book has lots of examples from Bierman’s home country of Germany and quite a few from other places.Football Hackers is well worth reading for anyone interested in how to apply statistics to a complex, flowing game. For anyone interested in getting a feel for what’s coming in modern football it’s highly recommended. It’s also well written and flows well from concept to concept and person to person.

I hope Mr Biermann will see this review:I’d like to thank him for putting so much effort to provide us, students of the game, with the newest concepts in football data revolution. Hopefully we’ll get in contact to exchange some ideas.This is a MUST READ!

This book is entertaining, thought provoking, and insightful. It provides a solid window into the way that soccer is changing, and into how decisions are made. If you love soccer and data, this is an absolute must.

This book introduces you to some people who use quantitative methods to analyze football. It tells you almost nothing about the actual insights. Whether that's because they wouldn't tell the author or whether the author didn't understand or want to pass along the information, we will never know. Save your money.

The author illustrates the advances, the good, the bad and the ugly of analytics in football clearly and vividly. Cannot recommend enough to anyone who is interested in the topic.

Fabulous. Insightful. Makes you want to delve deeper into the subject.The footballing world needs more work along these lines. Fans need to understand the game better beyond the mere lazy narritification of things.

Great inside info

I enjoyed Moneyball and Astroball, combine that with a data focused project I'm on and a fairly new interest In Football and I'd figure I'd try it. SO GLAD I DID! Yes, my limited knowledge of football made some parts harder than others, however I now understand way more.Unlike Money/Astro ball this uses shorter stories and an interwoven timeline of progress to provide insights and a complete story. *Bonus for referencing the inventor of Paradign shift like Astroball did.If I could ask for two things: it would be wonderful if there was a webpage with links to the referenced people and web pages, so many amazing things to research.Some sort of timeline or plotted chart showing how many of the people referenced are only a connection or two removed from each other.

I enjoyed this. It's the book others in the genre should have been. Clearly there's still a way to go in this field but this was a fascinating and we'll written state of play summary. There were times when I wanted to wave pages or passages in front of some of the more "traditional" fans who believe that there's no room for analysis in football. Quick read as well.

I’ve read a fair few general statistics books and occasionally mess around with various statistical models for football betting. In the past I’d never taken the plunge and bought a football related statistics book thinking the analysis would be basic and not very insightful. This book completely changed my view.The examples of how the data is used within football clubs and by individuals show how the analysis shown in the book is fresh and relevant.The analysis isn’t difficult and is explained in an easy to follow manner so shouldn’t put off those who don’t enjoy numbers.A good book for anyone interested in stats and/or football.

I would highly recommend anyone interested in football to give this book a read. It will not only change your understanding of the game but also stimulate you to think differently in terms of dissecting individual elements of it and making sense of it all together.

Really enjoyed this book, would recommend to any football fan into stats and data as well. Fascinating stuff

A great read for anyone interesting in understanding football stats and their applicability