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Simon Kuper

Simon Gad Kuper is a British, and naturalized French, author and journalist, best known for his work at the Financial Times and as a football commentator.

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Simon Kuper
Simon Kuper in 2026
Born
Simon Gad Kuper

(1969-10-15) 15 October 1969
Kampala, Uganda
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA)
OccupationJournalist
Known for
SpousePamela Druckerman
Awards
Websitewww.ft.com/simon-kuper Edit this at Wikidata

Simon Gad Kuper is a British, and naturalized French,1 author and journalist, best known for his work at the Financial Times and as a football commentator.23

Born in Uganda to South African parents, Kuper spent most of his childhood in the Netherlands and lives in Paris. After studies at the University of Oxford,4 Harvard University5 and the Technische Universität Berlin, Kuper started his career in journalism at the Financial Times in 1994, where he writes about a wide range of topics, such as politics, society, culture, arts and sports.62

Early life and education

Kuper was born in Uganda of South African-born parents, and moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child. He studied History and German at the University of Oxford, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar in 1993.5

Career

Kuper authors a column in the weekend edition FT Magazine6 and has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year.78 Kuper has also written for The Guardian and The Times.9

Kuper’s approach to sports writing, particularly on football, has earned him several accolades, including the 1994 William Hill Sports Book of the Year. He writes about sports "from an anthropological perspective."10

Kuper is the author of several books, among them the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy and the Sunday Times Bestseller about UK politics, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK.11

Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column and worked in other departments, before leaving the FT in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports columnist and has worked there ever since. Nowadays, he writes a general column for the Weekend FT on topics from politics12 to books, and on cities including London, Paris, Johannesburg and Miami.6 Kuper has also written for The Times and The Observer9 ESPN,13 and The Spectator.14

Kuper also writes in Dutch, and his work frequently appeared in publications including the newspapers NRC Handelsblad15 and Het Financieele Dagblad,16 the literary football magazine Hard Gras and the online newspaper De Correspondent.17

Financial Times

Since joining the FT in 1994, Kuper has held various roles, writing on a wide range of topics, from sports and popular culture to politics.1819

Kuper started his FT career as a reporter. His assignments have often taken him beyond his base in Paris, providing coverage and analysis on events from other parts of the world.

Kuper's sportswriting is appreciated for its exploration of sports beyond mere scores and statistics, looking at the societal, political and cultural impact of sports globally.4 Kuper discusses the culture that surrounds football — such as the Old Firm rivalry — as well as the on-field play.20 He has written on cricket occasionally, with articles on cricket in the Netherlands21 and cricket in apartheid South Africa.22

Kuper has also contributed for many years to the FT's Weekend magazine, as a Life & Arts columnist,23 often with long-form essays and interviews spanning themes such as current affairs, travel, history and politics.

Kuper has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year, in 20167 and 2020.8

Books

Kuper has written several books, starting with the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy (1994), which was later released in the United States as Soccer Against the Enemy.24 The Times wrote of the book: "If you like football, read it. If you don't like football, read it."24

In 2003, he published a book on AFC Ajax.25 He co-authored the 2009 book Soccernomics with Stefan Szymanski.26 The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.27

Kuper's book The Football Men, which was published in 2011, offered a collection of articles about the world of football over 13 years, along with new pieces written for the book.28

Kuper's book Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Built Modern Football appeared in 2021. It won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year 2022.29

Also in 2021, Kuper released The Happy Traitor,30 an account of the life and motivations of George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union. The narrative sheds light on Blake's ideological shifts and personal struggles with identity.31

In 2022, he published Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK,11323334 about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster.35

Bibliography

  • Football Against the Enemy (1994)
  • Ajax, The Dutch, The War: Football in Europe During the Second World War (2003)
  • Soccernomics (Why England Lose: and Other Curious Phenomena Explained)26
  • The Football Men: Up Close with the Giants of the Modern Game (2011)
  • Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club That Built Modern Football (2021)
  • The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies and Exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake (2021)
  • Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK11
  • Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions - And What We Can Do About It (2024)
  • Impossible City: Paris in the Twenty-First Century (2025)
  • World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments (2025)

Personal life

Kuper's father Adam Kuper, was a professor in anthropology at Leiden University. He was brought up Jewish and is named after his paternal grandfather, Simon Meyer Kuper, who was a South African Supreme Court judge assassinated in 1963.36

Kuper has lived in Jamaica, Sweden, Palo Alto, California, Berlin and London.

As of 2026 Kuper lives in Paris with his wife, the American author Pamela Druckerman.37 They have three children. In 2022, he wrote in the Financial Times that he had recently become a naturalized French citizen after living in Paris for more than 20 years.1

References

References

  1. Kuper, Simon (2022). "Becoming French is like winning the lottery". ft.com. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
  2. Kuper, Simon (2026). "The World Cup 2026 — You asked, Simon Kuper answered". ft.com. London. "Fans have no power over them. FIFA is an unaccountable autocratic monopolist (the World Cup is a monopoly) that controls a cashbox that nobody can even look into"
  3. Simon Kuper at the Muck Rack journalist directory
  4. Larsen, Martin Alfonsin; Holland, Matthew (2023). "In conversation with Simon Kuper". oxfordstudent.com. Oxford: The Oxford Student. Archived from the original on 12 June 2023.
  5. Anon (2023). "Full List of Kennedy Scholars - Kennedy Memorial Trust". kennedytrust.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2 July 2023. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  6. "Simon Kuper". ft.com. London: Financial Times. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  7. "BSME Awards 2016 – the winners". inpublishing.co.uk. 16 November 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  8. "Awards 2020 Winners SLIDES". bsme.com. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  9. Kuper, Simon (19 April 2022). "'A nursery of the Commons': how the Oxford Union created today's ruling political class". theguardian.com. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  10. A quote from the short bio next to his article ‘De Teloorgang’ in Vrij Nederland, nr. 23, 7 June 2008. Page 24.
  11. Simon Kuper (2022) Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK
  12. Kuper, Simon (18 September 2019). "How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain's next prime minister". Financial Times. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  13. Kuper, Simon (11 October 2017). "Dutch stagnation is due to lack of new ideas, new managers at the top". epsn.com. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  14. Kuper, Simon (29 June 2022). "The conspiracy against women's football". spectator.co.uk. The Spectator. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  15. Gelder, Machteld van (20 October 2021). "Simon Kuper: 'Ik ben beducht voor mensen die niet kunnen luisteren'". nrc.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  16. "Zoekresultaten voor simon kuper | Zoeken | Het Financieele Dagblad". fd.nl. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  17. "Simon Kuper - De Correspondent". decorrespondent.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  18. Kuper, Simon (16 June 2022). "Western Europe's cynicism about Ukrainian suffering". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  19. Kuper, Simon (22 September 2022). "Populism isn't over. It's getting an upgrade". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  20. "No Headline Present". heraldscotland.com. Herald Scotland. 5 May 1999. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  21. Simon Kuper (5 March 2007). "Hail Holland, world cricket's unlikely lads". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
  22. Simon Kuper (6 March 2006). "All the time in the world". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
  23. Anon (26 October 2020). "An Interview with Simon Kuper, Author and Life and Arts Columnist for the Financial Times". theglobalamericans.org. Global Americans. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  24. "Football Against The Enemy: the story behind the story | Sporting Intelligence". Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  25. Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War
  26. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2009) Soccernomics
  27. Lammers, Coen (2010). "Formula predicts who will win". stuff.co.nz. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  28. "The Football Men, by Simon Kuper". independent.co.uk. The Independent. 11 June 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  29. "sportsbookaward/status/1529934066241486870". Twitter. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
  30. Lipman, Maria (20 April 2021). "The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies, and Exile in Russia; The Extraordinary Story of George Blake". Foreign Affairs. No. May/June 2021. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  31. Norton-Taylor, Richard (20 March 2021). "The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper review – the extraordinary story of George Blake". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  32. Deng, Yii-Jeng (21 May 2022). "Book Review: Chums by Simon Kuper". oxfordstudent.com. The Oxford Student.
  33. Adams, Tim (1 May 2022). "Review of Chums by Simon Kuper". The Guardian.
  34. Roy, Amit (30 September 2022). "Special set (review of Chums)". telegraphindia.com. The Telegraph, India.
  35. Moravcsik, Andrew (1 November 2022). "Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK". Foreign Affairs. No. November/December 2022. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 2 July 2023.
  36. Johnson, R.W. "Carry on up the Corner Flag". lrb.co.uk. London Review of Books. Retrieved 11 June 2026.
  37. Shea, Christopher (16 February 2012). "The Bébé's Dad Speaks". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 1 July 2023.