How to Watch Soccer Like a Genius, by Nick Greene.

Tracing the sport’s growth from the “folk football” of medieval England — in which players kicked around sheeps’ bladders and human heads — to the 19th-century private schools that popularized the modern game, Greene writes that soccer is “less an invention than some side effect of the human condition.”

Offering an intellectual tune-up for readers who wish to get the most out of their World Cup viewing, Greene interviews several experts “to unpack the sport’s purpose and design,” Publishers Weekly noted, including a scientist who compares soccer’s low-scoring affairs to “poorly designed experiments,” in which random events are decisive. Buy How to Watch Soccer Like a Genius from your local bookstore.