englandu21vfranceu212_8o0ay01nzlLONDON - As the English football season gets under way, the Daily Star has picked out 11 bits of the trivia from a book, called Why England Lose And Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained…

1. English-born players account for only 37 percent of playing time in the Premier League.

2. The England international side seems to have a patchy record.But figures show that the team actually win 66 percent of their matches and England’s winning percentage has never gone below 62 percent or above 70 percent.

3. The risk of injury to a top footballer during one game after a week of training is 10 percent.

4. England may peak too soon. In their last five big tournaments they scored 22 of their 35 goals in the first half of matches. Other top teams score later.

5. The top clubs are not that rich. The average Premier League club has a yearly turnover similar to a single supermarket branch - not a chain as you might expect.

6. Scots are more into football than the English. If the same proportion of English turned out to games as Scottish, the average top-flight English match would draw crowds of 90,000.

7. Norwegians are the most enthusiastic football spectators in the world with 50,000 Norwegians belonging to supporters’ clubs of a British team.

8. A massive 92 percent of fans of Chelsea, whose stars include Frank Lampard, 31, and John Terry, 28, were not Chelsea supporters eight years ago.

9. There are 265 million footballers worldwide and 90 percent of them are men.

10. Football tournaments save lives because most European countries see a decrease in the suicide rate when they are on.

11. Teams going first in penalty shoot-outs win 60 percentof the time. (ANI)