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‘ABSORBING‘ Guardian
‘ENTHRALLING‘ New Statesman
‘EPIC‘ Evening Standard
‘INESCAPABLE‘ The Sunday Times
‘MAGISTERIAL‘ Irish Examiner
Fully revised and updated, the definitive history of Argentinian football from the award-winning author of Inverting the Pyramid
Alfredo Di Stefano, Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistua, Juan Roman Riquelme, Lionel Messi… Argentina has produced some of the greatest footballers of all time. But the rich, volatile history of Argentinian football is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic. Jonathan Wilson, having lived in Buenos Aires, is ideally placed to chart the sport’s development in a country that, perhaps more than any other, lives and breathes football, its theories and its myths.
Fully revised and updated, this new edition looks at the contrasting evolution of Argentinian football over the last ten years; from the chaos and violence of the abandoned 2018 Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors to the revitalised national side under manager Lionel Scaloni, which triumphed at the 2019 Copa América and the 2022 World Cup.
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is the definitive history of a great footballing nation and its many paradoxes.
Update Publishing: 07.12.23
‘ENTHRALLING‘ New Statesman
‘EPIC‘ Evening Standard
‘INESCAPABLE‘ The Sunday Times
‘MAGISTERIAL‘ Irish Examiner
Fully revised and updated, the definitive history of Argentinian football from the award-winning author of Inverting the Pyramid
Alfredo Di Stefano, Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistua, Juan Roman Riquelme, Lionel Messi… Argentina has produced some of the greatest footballers of all time. But the rich, volatile history of Argentinian football is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic. Jonathan Wilson, having lived in Buenos Aires, is ideally placed to chart the sport’s development in a country that, perhaps more than any other, lives and breathes football, its theories and its myths.
Fully revised and updated, this new edition looks at the contrasting evolution of Argentinian football over the last ten years; from the chaos and violence of the abandoned 2018 Copa Libertadores final between River Plate and Boca Juniors to the revitalised national side under manager Lionel Scaloni, which triumphed at the 2019 Copa América and the 2022 World Cup.
ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is the definitive history of a great footballing nation and its many paradoxes.
Update Publishing: 07.12.23
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Reviews
Epic in sweep ... a history of Argentinian football that is also a truly magnificent history of that country ... an unfailingly fascinating read
This is a huge, magisterial study of Argentinian football and the culture and violence that informs it ... The country has lurched from one coup to the next, Juan Peron looms large in Wilson's story. He writes movingly about the dirty war that went on in the background to the country's World Cup triumph, and shares laugh-out-loud yarns from its 1986 World Cup victory
'Wilson is a cerebral and knowledgeable sports journalist . . . and what he gives us in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is not just a history of the game in Argentina, but also an exhaustive account of all the cultural, social and political context in which moments such as the country's World Cup victories in 1978 and 1986 took place ... the extraordinary attention to detail will reward the dedicated reader as he serves up reams of entertaining titbits, involving one-handed strikers, buried chickens and plenty more, alongside serious consideration of the junta's reign of terror and other instances of Argentine discord'
The definitive history of Argentinian football
'In its expression of ruined promise, domestic football in Argentina has mirrored the country's social, financial and political life. Three of the greatest of all footballers (Alfredo Di Stefano, Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi) inherited the fire, passion and trickery of their native game in Argentina and all went on to spend their best years in Europe. An inescapable sense of regret and decay pervades this thorough and evocative chronicle'
This enthralling socio-political account of a football-obsessed nation illuminates on many levels
Immensely readable and wonderfully-researched history of a nation and its long-term love for the beautiful game
'Ambitious . . . [Wilson] has a fine eye for detail and a solid grasp of the big picture. He writes confidently about the sport, including tactics and strategies, but also about social and political questions . . . A sprawling, vibrant book about soccer in Argentina, a country where the sport is every bit as important and reflective of the society as it is anywhere in the world'
'From Alfredo Di Stefano to Lionel Messi, Argentine football get the Jonathan Wilson treatment in this exhaustive, illuminating history. HBO could make this into a series'
'Wilson is one of soccer's most respected historians and anoraks and here he delivers the definitive history of the beautiful game in Argentina'
Immensely readable and wonderfully researched history of a nation and its long-term love for the beautiful game . . . after reading this excellent history, you'll be convinced that it won't be long before they add to their two World Cup titles
For unpicking what it is about Argentine football that appeals and appals in almost equal measure read Angels with Dirty Faces by Jonathan Wilson, one of those writers who writes about the familiar in the most unfamiliar of ways
'Wilson, as you would expect from the author of several important books on football history and tactics, goes far deeper than the stereotype ... fine-grained and often original research . . . as a writer who knows and appreciates Argentina, he is prepared to take on the more demanding task of telling the story in parallel with that of the country's turbulent political and social evolution . . . densely detailed but absorbing book'
'Jonathan Wilson's enthralling and often disturbing history of Argentinian football . . . Wilson, one of the best of a new generation of football writers eager to to emphasise the bigger picture, untangles the social, economic and political narratives . . . He offers a nuanced examination of the extraordinary talents of Maradona and Lionel Messi, "the all-time great who never played at home". He deconstructs the Anglocentric interpretations of both 1966 and 1986 . . . Wilson's vignettes of former legends are well observed . . . The author is at his best when he is dissecting Argentinian football's idealised, aesthetically pleasing past, the psychodrama of its modern game, and its chequered football history'
'Jonathan Wilson's INVERTING THE PYRAMID is easily the best game about soccer I've ever read, a
treatise on tactics that's worth a hundred dismal 'autobiographies'. Now Wilson has turned his considerable powers to one country and its obsession with the game: ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES. It's a history of Argentina as reflected in the sport, and how life in Argentina has been reflected in the sport . . . This is the kind of book you don't see too often, an attempt to use a broad canvas and to include detail far beyond team sheets and scorelines . . . Conceiving of and writing a book like this is an achievement in and of itself'