Simon Kuper is a South African-British author. He writes about sports "from an anthropologic perspective." Kuper was born in Uganda of South African parents, and moved to

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

in the Netherlands as a child, where his father, Adam Kuper, was a lecturer in anthropology at Leiden University. He is named for his grandfather—Adam Kuper's father—who was a South African Supreme Court judge assassinated in 1963. He has lived in Stanford, California, Berlin and London. He studied History and German at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, and attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

as a Kennedy Scholar. He now lives in Paris with his family. He won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1994 with his book '' Football Against the Enemy'', which was later released in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

as '' Soccer Against the Enemy''. He has also written for

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...

and

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

, and is currently a sports columnist for the

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikke ...

. In 2003 he published his book '' Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War''. He co-authored the 2009 book ''Soccernomics'' with Stefan Szymanski. The book put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final. In 2022 he published ''Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK'', about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster. Kuper usually writes about football, discussing the culture that surrounds it — such as the Old Firm rivalry — as well as the on-field play. He has written on cricket occasionally, with articles on cricket in the Netherlands and cricket in apartheid South Africa. Kuper also writes in Dutch, and his work frequently appeared in publications including the Dutch newspaper De Pers, the literary football magazine Hard Gras, and opinion magazine

Vrij Nederland ''Vrij Nederland'' (Free Netherlands) is a Dutch magazine, established during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II as an underground newspaper. It has since grown into a magazine. The originally weekly and now monthly magazi ...

References

External links

Simon Kuper short biography
in Financial Times web site * 1969 births Living people British male writers Dutch male writers British sports journalists People from Kampala People from Leiden Alumni of the University of Oxford Harvard University alumni Kennedy Scholarships {{England-writer-stub