Last June I posted about the outcomes that might be expected for South Africa or any country that hosted a large international competition like the World Cup or the Olympics. The evidence from economists was that people would be happier – but only for about a year after the event and psychiatrists were concerned that there [...]
Football fans have got used to the cheating and wheeler dealing that goes on, particularly in the Premier League where the stakes are high. The owners know we love our football and will put up with pretty much anything as long as we can follow our teams. A prime example was West Ham’s breach of the [...]
We’ve already seen the Israeli army using Facebook to suss out people claiming to be orthodox so they can dodge conscription. Now the Jewish football league has suspended the London Holy Mount Zion team from the Maccabi Southern Football League after discovering – via Facebook – that they were fielding non-jewish players under false names. [...]
Football can make people happier. Two economists tried but failed to prove that football was good for a country’s economy. But when they looked at national pride and happiness they got better results. They looked for changes in life satisfaction in 12 European countries over 30 years up to 2004, and especially looked at [...]
The best way to take a football penalty is to shoot straight down the middle as goal-keepers tend to move to their right or to their left. At least that’s the conclusion of a group of economists who studied penalty-taking in the French and Italian leagues using a branch of mathematics called (perhaps appropriately) game [...]
