The book is supposed to be about football. There are four sections in total. The first section is about the football rules, their application and interpretation. There is a basic statement that the rules are to the disadvantage of the attackers in many situations. On the one hand, this must be well justified, and on the other hand, causes and effects must be given. Of course, in all cases a way should be presented how it could be changed and improved. A primary goal is to make football more attractive, more exciting and fairer. As sufficient to achieve this, it can probably be argued that the application of the existing rules is sufficient, but certainly modifications can be offered here or there that are eminently logical and easy to implement, which applies to both amateur and professional football.
The second section is devoted to reporting. Although this is primarily a German problem, the foreign comparison can motivate quite well where the problems lie. To begin with, only non-representative surveys serve as proof of the grievance, which nevertheless surprisingly delivered the same results almost across the board, i.e. irrespective of age structure or level of education: the reporting (in this country) is bad. The basic tenor is that better reporting could well contribute to an increase in fan potential. That said, it doesn’t seem plausible that just because football is a simple game, the commentary has to be wrong. Essential statements are that the reporters base almost every one of their statements on actual scores or final results, and that the intention is to take out the tension rather than build it up. This part can also be well justified and suggestions for improvement – some of which also concern the way they are prepared – can be presented. This section also leads quite logically to the following section, since the required objectivity also refers to reasonable assessments of the chances.
The third section will then address an even more complex part. It is about the predictability of football and the betting market. A specially developed football programme is presented – with all logically derived parameters – and the possible statements are formulated. The point is that only probabilities can be determined. This may sound unsatisfactory, but it is the only thing that can really be extracted. The problem will only be in all cases that a probability statement is not considered a prediction. So there is quite a bit of education to be done here, however, once this is done, the whole betting market can be well explained. How does it actually work, what types of bets are there, what is an odds bet, what is the connection between payout ratio and probability of occurrence? To increase credibility, several statistics taken from the computer can be cited, as well as the author’s reference to 20 successful years of betting with the help of the Copmuter programme.
A fourth section will first take a closer look at the 2010 World Cup under the aspects indicated, which, especially on the basis of the brilliant performance of the German team, is more likely to provide evidence for some theses than to cast doubt on them. Furthermore, there is a review of a number of other major tournaments where luck rather than anything else should be held responsible for the successes.
