The title of this gem of a book is a little misleading. Only one pre-chapter specifically deals with the supposed English football sickness. The main substance of the book deals with sport in general and asks; what makes certain countries successful at sport? The methodology of K&S is to number crunch. By using hard statistics and pumping them into a complex mathematical computer programme they claim to be able to see a definite pattern as to why some countries do better than others, including dear old England. According to this method, England perform as expected and at times do rather better than expected.

The key criteria for measuring these things are size of population, wealth of country, experience in international sport and most crucially, proximity to the central core of expertise; in the case of football, that being Western Europe. The main problem for England is its unrealistic expectations in respect to footballing success. England is currently ranked around 10th on the FIFA rankings and that position, according to K&S reflects their economic and demographic status. The unpalatable fact that Britain have not won a major football tournament since 1966 (44 years ago) does not surprise K&S. They would be surprised if England did win because it would conflict with their mathematical model. K&S argue that if English football would only integrate itself more closely with West European football they might do a little better. FA decisions to appoint European managers are a step in the right direction but a medium size population and a relative declining economy mitigate against footballing glory. Quarter-finals and the occasional semi-finals are realistically the best England can hope for.

Where do our false expectations of footballing success derive from. K&S are quite specific on this:

Everyone in England thinks we have a God-given right to win the World Cup. So said England international Johnny Haynes, after England’s elimination in 1958. This (continued) belief in the face of all evidence was (and still is) a hangover from empire: England is football’s mother country and should therefore be the best today. In reality, England is a country like many others and the England football team is a football team like many others. This truth is only slowly sinking in.’ P9

K&S make explicit the connection between financial power and footballing power:

This gradual shift away from British dominance in football echoes the decline in Britain’s economic status. The country went from supreme economic power under Victoria to having its hand held by the International Monetary fund in the late 1970’s.’ P28

K&S highlight the falsely inflated little-Englander mentality by quoting the Daily Mail’s outrage at the appointment of a foreign coach (Sven Goran Eriksson):

The Daily mail blathered, ‘The mother country of football, birthplace of the greatest game, has finally gone from the cradle to the shame.’

The response from K&S was precise and cutting.’ P34

It was a wonderful statement of English exceptionalism: the belief that England is an exceptional football country that should rule the world playing the English way. However, the obvious statistical truth is that England is not exceptional. It is typical of the second-tier football countries outside the core western Europe.’P34

It was about this stage in the book that I was getting just a little irritable with all this statistical number crunching that K&S love to do. It was not so much that I doubted their findings but rather their over-emphasis on facts at the expense of chance. Then low and behold, as if predicting my irritation, out they come with this very point. In discussing the historical fortunes of English football teams, K&S are keen to highlight the role that luck plays in any tournament campaign:

Normally, the difference between teams in the final stages of a World cup are tiny. The difference between an England team being considered legendary or a failure is two or three games, each generally decided by a single goal, in two years. After all, the difference between making a World Cup and spending the summer on the beach can be just a point. Sometimes a point is lost by hitting the post. Sometimes it’s a point garnered by a rival in a match you didn’t even play in’ P49

The dialectical relationship between a statistical (law governed) inevitability and random chance in history is always a fascinating one, and K&S are quite willing to concede, the enormous role of luck in history. In the context of football K&S elaborate:

We tend to think with hindsight that a team that did well in a particular tournament was somehow always going to do well, and a team that lost was doomed to do so. The winner’s victory comes to seem inevitable. This is a common flaw in the writing of any kind of history.’P49

Point well made K&S but the danger is that some historians will refuse to acknowledge any type of inevitable pattern in history at all. Everything just becomes a tapestry of individual randomness with no predictable collective outcome considered. Marx was most astute on this point arguing that men do make their own history but not in the circumstances of their own choosing. Similarly, a football team can make its own history but statistically it will succeed only within the parameters of what its material conditions will allow. North Korea battled bravely in the ‘group of death’ but its relative poverty, lack of international experience and most importantly, its distance from the European footballing core, inevitably doomed it to an early exit.

There is much to recommend in the ensuing sections of the book but for me the stand out chapter is to be found near the end under the self explanatory title: ‘The Curse of Poverty; Why poor countries are poor at sport.’ In this chapter K&S debunk the oft quoted argument that poverty makes for sporting success. Yes, there does need to be that initial hunger often borne by a desire to escape ones impoverished surroundings, but without a supporting infrastructure that inevitably requires substantial resources, either state or personal or both, it is highly unlikely that the individual hunger will amount to much. This may be truer for some sports than others but K&S argue that poverty is a poor base to build a sporting success story:

There is a myth that poor people are somehow best equipped to make it as sportsmen. A cliche often used about them is that sport is their only escape route from poverty. The poor, supposedly, are figuratively hungrier than the rich.’ P293

K&S then cite a formidable list of great athletes including Maradona, Drogba, Zidane who have risen from humble origins to sporting greatness. Faced with such seemingly compelling evidence the conclusion that most people rush to is that, ‘The best preparation for sporting greatness seems to be a poor childhood.’ P294

But K&S strongly refute this conclusion:

The facts show that the world’s poor people and poor countries are worse at sport than the rich ones. It is true that poorer immigrants in rich countries often excel at sport, but the reasons for that have nothing to do with skin colour or hunger.’P300

Using their sophisticated mathematical model again, K&S come up with a very different picture but one that should not surprise anyone who cares to think logically about sport:

Our efficiency table for sports bears a curious resemblance to another global ranking: the United Nations human development index. This measures life expectancy, literacy, education and living standards to rank the countries of the world according to their well-being. We found that a nation’s well-being is closely correlated with its success in sport. In all, eight of the countries in our sporting top ten were also among the UN’s twenty-three most developed countries on earth.’P301

The conclusion is as clear as it is obvious. People all over the world might want to play sport, but to make that possible requires money and organisation that poor countries don’t have. P302

A deeper and more profound conclusion emerges from the substantial work that K&S have put together:

One reason why poor countries do badly at sport and one reason why they are poor is that they tend to be less ‘networked’, less connected to other countries, than rich ones. It is hard for them just to find out the latest best practice on how to play a sport.’ P307

Having just watched Wimbledon unfold for another summer, one can’t help but be impressed with the de-bunking exercise that K&S have carried out. If ever there was a festival of sport carried out by the wealthy, for the wealthy, then Wimbledon is it. The nearest Africa gets to the tennis limelight is the brilliance of the African-American William sisters but statistically they are very much the exception to the rule. Top class tennis, like so many sports, remains the preserve of the wealthy western middle-class, and will remain so unless and until the Asian and African challenge to Western economic hegemony gathers pace as the 21st century progresses.

The central question remains open however; does the hosting of global events like the FIFA World Cup by the poorer periphery countries help to break their sporting and economic isolation or simply lock them in to a role of minor supporting actor in a far bigger global production over which they have little or no control?

Postscript: K&S got it spot on. Three of the four semi-finalists in South Africa 2010 were from the core footballing area of Western Europe. The African, Asian and much fancied South Americans failed to deliver. Uruguay proved to be nothing but a plucky interloper.