SPerson

Simon Kuper

Financial Times columnist; co-author of Soccernomics.

• Simon Kuper is a British and French author and journalist who writes for the Financial Times on politics, society, culture and football.
• Born in Uganda to South African parents and raised in the Netherlands, he lives in Paris.
• His books run from Football Against the Enemy (1994) and Soccernomics (2009) to Chums (2022), on the Oxford Tories who came to run Britain, and Impossible City (2025), on Paris.

Key facts

Early life

Born in Uganda to South African-born parents; grew up in Leiden, where his father, the anthropologist Adam Kuper, taught1

Education

History and German at the University of Oxford; Kennedy Scholar at Harvard (1993); Technische Universität Berlin1

Financial Times

From 1994 to 1998, writing the daily currencies column; returned in 2002 as a sports columnist, and also writes for FT Weekend's Life & Arts1

Other writing

The Times, The Observer, ESPN, The Spectator; in Dutch for NRC Handelsblad, Het Financieele Dagblad, Hard Gras and De Correspondent1

Awards

British Society of Magazine Editors' Columnist of the Year (2016, 2020); Barça won the Sunday Times Football Book of the Year 20221

Books

Football Against the Enemy (1994); Ajax, The Dutch, the War (2003); Soccernomics, with Stefan Szymanski (2009); The Football Men (2011); Barça (2021); The Happy Traitor (2021); Chums (2022); Good Chaps (2024); Impossible City (2025); World Cup Fever (2025)1

Citizenship

Became a naturalised French citizen after more than 20 years in Paris, as he wrote in the FT in 20221

31 Oct 2026Last checked against its sources today

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