7 books for sports analytics fans

From history to science, learn everything about everything in football data.

Voracious readers are always looking for another book, whether it’s to read or to put on a “to-read” list that they will get to one day when they have a free weekend. Whatever your level of knowledge is, you can always learn more about data science and how it can be applied to football. We have found seven very well-regarded and informative books about the field of football tactics and analytics, and are delighted to recommend them to anyone looking for their next read.

Soccermatics by Dr. David Sumpter

Written by one of the top players in the game of football analytics, Soccermatics is a look into the numbers behind football, which it calls “the most mathematical of sports”. It shows how numbers work not only in a general sense but also with a focus on individual players and teams. It is a very technical read, but a good one.

The Numbers Game by Chris Anderson and David Sally

A behavioral analyst and a former football player wrote this book, which upends a lot of conventional wisdom about the game. They look at the efficiency and success of different ideas. Interestingly, they show the lack of correlation between salaries and success, but they take the same mathematical cudgel to many of football’s sacred cows.

Football Hackers by Christoph Biermann

Rather than being written by an expert (though Biermann is a very knowledgeable football journalist), this book is about the author interviewing many experts. He assembles a wide variety of views and ideas about analytics and creates a fairly comprehensive overview of it all as a result.

The Expected Goals Philosophy by James Tippett

One of the best-known books discussing “football’s best-kept secret,” The Expected Goals metric, is written by the same man behind The xG Philosophy Twitter account (which collects xG data and compares it to actual results). The book dives into the concept of xG and exactly what makes it such a powerful metric. If you don’t know what xG is, this is the book for you.

The Mixer by Michael Cox

It is not quite an analytics book, but The Mixer does discuss the seismic change that has happened in the last 30 years of football wit