Kuper, Simon – The Bell Bookshop

World Cup Fever

Emma — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Sports Book of the Year in the Irish Times, the FT and the Mail on Sunday 'Kuper is one of the best sportswriters in the English language today' New Yorker 'Unmissable … The ultimate book for anyone who loves football' Mail on Sunday 'A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle… an essential companion' David Goldblatt It's the biggest competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for the world's greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long media spectacle that's watched by billions. The World Cup has changed beyond recognition since the early days, when the players were semi-pros and the trophy went missing. Today, it's a corporate-led bonanza of dark money and dubious ethics. Simon Kuper, bestselling author of Barça, reflects on every tournament since Italia 90 to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world. Entertaining and compelling, World Cup Fever is the definitive story of football's greatest drama, and of how the tournament can touch – and even change – our lives.

Soccernomics

Emma — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The classic bestseller that changed how the world thinks about football

'Quite magnificent – a sort of Freakanomics of football.' Jonathan Wilson, Guardian

'If you're a football fan, I'll save you some time: read this book' Daily Telegraph

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Football truly is the world’s favourite game, followed in over 200 countries by hundreds of millions of people pouring their hearts and souls into supporting their chosen team every week.

But behind the passion are questions that all true football fans want answered: has football spending spun out of control? How much do managers matter? Is hosting a World Cup a poisoned chalice?

Soccernomics challenges the conventional wisdom to reveal the surprising truths that actually determine success and failure on the pitch. From an acclaimed economist and leading sports journalist, this modern classic uses data and economic principles to explore the myths that dominate the game.

Fully revised and updated ahead of the 2026 World Cup, Soccernomics takes you behind the passion and into the patterns – revealing why your team wins, why it loses, and why the game you love doesn't always work the way you think it does.

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Soccernomics is essential reading for anyone in search of a more strategic, systematic perspective on the game, answering the questions that most consume football fans.

Football Against the Enemy

Emma — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

'GREAT' Independent
'TERRIFIC' Guardian
'WONDERFUL' Time Out
'QUALITY' Mail on Sunday
'DEFINITIVE' FourFourTwo

Winner of the William Hill Sports Book Award
Featured in FourFourTwo's list of 'The 10 Best Football Books Ever'
Featured in Esquire's 'Best Sports Books Ever Written'

Throughout the world, football is a potent force in the lives of billions of people. Whether national, political or cultural identities, football is the medium through which the world's hopes and fears, passions and hatreds are expressed.

Simon Kuper travelled to twenty-two countries from South Africa and Italy to Russia and the USA to examine the way football has shaped them. At the same time, he tried to find out what lies behind each nation's distinctive style of play, from the carefree self-expression of the Brazilians to the anxious calculation of the Italians. During his journeys he met an extraordinary range of players, politicians and – of course – the fans themselves, all of whom revealed in their different ways the unique place football has in the life of the planet.

The World at My Feet

Emma — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

‘A brilliant evocation of the joy of the football carnival and the absurdities of the global spectacle… an essential companion’ David Goldblatt It’s the biggest sporting competition on Earth. A four-yearly chance for our greatest footballers to realise their ultimate dream. A month-long spectacle that’s watched by billions. But the inaugural World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930, was semi-professional, poorly attended and haphazardly organised – so how did it become a bonanza of multinational sponsorship, dubious ethics and shadowy characters, and the ultimate stage for football’s greatest drama?Simon Kuper is one of very few people to have attended every World Cup since 1990. In World Cup Fever he looks back at each tournament he’s experienced – from half-empty stands at Italia 90 to the French triumph as hosts in 1998, South Africa’s national dream in 2010 and the troubling legacy of 2022 – to reveal a captivating portrait of sport in a globalised world. World Cup Fever is the story of how the tournament touches and sometimes even changes our lives, by one of the best writers on the beautiful game.

Impossible city

Emma — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024A Waterstones Best History Book of 2024 Pick ‘Kuper is a shrewd observer [in] this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology’ The Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer’s tale of a naÃ¯f getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city. Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city’s notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family’s neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change. This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it’s a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn’t. This decade, Parisians have lived through a sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by gilets jaunes, and the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the ‘Grand Paris’ project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs. This is a captivating memoir of today’s Paris without the clichés.

Good Chaps

Emma — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘At a time when democracy feels threatened, Simon Kuper is fighting hard for a better vision of politics – he is brutally honest about our problems but never loses hope that we can build a better democracy’ Rory Stewart’An intelligible, compelling and enraging narrative … how the Good Chaps get away with it’ New StatesmanThe ‘Good Chaps’ theory holds that those who rise to power in the UK can be trusted to follow the rules and do the right thing. They’re good chaps, after all. Yet Britain appears to have been taken over by bad chaps, and politics is awash with financial scandals, donors who have practically bought shares in political parties, and a shameless contempt for the rules.Simon Kuper, author of the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller Chums, exposes how corruption took control of public life, and asks: how can we get politicians to behave like good chaps again?

Impossible city

Emma — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘Kuper is a shrewd observer [in] this entertaining mix of memoir and anthropology’ The Sunday TimesFrom the bestselling author of Chums comes an explorer’s tale of a naÃ¯f getting to understand a complex, glittering, beautiful and often cruel city. Simon Kuper has experienced Paris both as a human being and as a journalist. He has grown middle-aged there, eaten the croissants, taken his children to countless football matches on freezing Saturday mornings in the city’s notorious banlieues, and in 2015 lived through two terrorist attacks on his family’s neighbourhood. Over two decades of becoming something of a cantankerous Parisian himself, Kuper has watched the city change. This century, Paris has globalised, gentrified, and been shocked into realising its role as the crucible of civilisational conflict. Sometimes it’s a multicultural paradise, and sometimes it isn’t. This decade, Parisians have lived through a sequence of shocks: terrorist attacks, record floods and heatwaves, the burning of Notre Dame, the storming of the city by gilets jaunes, and the pandemic. Now, as the Olympics come to town, France is busy executing the ‘Grand Paris’ project: the most serious attempt yet to knit together the bejewelled city with its neglected suburbs. This is a captivating memoir of today’s Paris without the clichés.

Chums

Emma — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Now with a new chapter on the end of the chumocracy era – and Oxford’s upcoming elite for 2050.THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BEST BOOK OF 2023Power. Privilege. Parties.It’s a very small world at the top.’Brilliant … traces Brexit back to the debating chambers of the Oxford Union in the 1980s’ James O’Brien’A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn’t. It matters’ Matthew Parris’A sparkling firework of a book’ Lynn Barber, Spectator’Exquisite and depressing in equal measure’ Matthew Syed, Sunday TimesBoris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Whitehall is swarming with old Oxonians. They debated each other in tutorials, ran against each other in student elections, and attended the same balls and black tie dinners. They aren’t just colleagues – they are peers, rivals, friends. And, when they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them. Thirteen of the seventeen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford University. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of this narrowest of talent pools – and the friendships and worldviews it created – shaped modern Britain. A damning look at the university clique-turned-Commons majority that will blow the doors of Westminster wide open and change the way you look at our democracy forever.

Soccernomics

Emma — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

‘Magnificent? Freakonomics for football’ – Guardian

Football truly is the world’s favourite game, followed in over 200 countries by hundreds of millions of people pouring their hearts and souls into supporting their chosen team every week.

But behind the passion are questions that all true football aficionados want answered: has football spending spun out of control? How much do managers matter? Is hosting a World Cup a poisoned chalice?

Fully revised and updated ahead of the 2022 World Cup, Soccernomics is the revolutionary guide from an economist and a sports writer who answer all these questions and more.