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Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina

Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina

by JonathanWilson (Author)

  • New

    Hardcover 2015

    $18.17
Synopsis

The definitive history of Argentinian football from the award-winning author of Inverting the Pyramid

Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Roman Riquelme, Sergio Aguero, Lionel Messi ... Argentina is responsible for some of the greatest footballers on the planet. Their rich, volatile history is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic.

Argentina is a nation obsessed with football, and Jonathan Wilson, having lived there on and off during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the five phases of Argentinian football: the appropriation of the British game; the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Peron led the country into isolation; a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-futbol; the fusing of beauty and efficacy under Cesar Luis Menotti; and the ludicrous (albeit underachieving) creative talent of recent times.

More than any other nation Argentina lives and breathes football, its theories and myths. The subject is fiercely debated on street corners and in cafes. It has even preoccupied the country's greatest writers and philosophers.

Angels with Dirty Faces is the definitive history of a great footballing nation and its many paradoxes.

$18.17

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 576
 Publisher: Orion
Published: 20 Aug 2015
ISBN 10: 1409144437
ISBN 13: 9781409144434
Book Overview: Argentina, seen through its rich, footballing history and published in a World Cup Year.

Media Reviews
'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' -- Richard Williams * GUARDIAN *
'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' * KIRKUS REVIEWS *
'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' * SPORT *

'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'

-- Michael Moynihan * IRISH EXAMINER *
'Wilson is one of soccer's most respected historians and anoraks and here he delivers the definitive history of the beautiful game in Argentina' -- Mark Keane * IRISH DAILY MAIL *
'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' * CATHOLIC HERALD *
'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' -- Anthony Clavane * NEW STATESMAN *
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 * THE PINK *
The definitive history of Argentinian football -- Barry Glendenning * THE GUARDIAN *
'Epic in sweep ... a history of Argentinian football that is also a truly magnificent history of that country ... an unfailingly fascinating read' -- Tom Holland * EVENING STANDARD Books of the Year 2016 *
'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' -- Nick Pitt * THE SUNDAY TIMES Best Sports Books of 2016 *
Immensely readable and wonderfully-researched history of a nation and its long-term love for the beautiful game * BIRMINGHAM POST *
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 -- Richard Fitzpatrick * IRISH EXAMINER *
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 -- Mark Perryman * PHILOSOPHY FOOTBALL *
This enthralling socio-political account of a football-obsessed nation illuminates on many levels -- Antony Clavane, author of A Yorkshire Tragedy * DAILY GAZETTE *
Author Bio

Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid won the National Sporting Club Book of the Year award, and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. His other books include Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football; Sunderland: A Club Transformed; The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches; Nobody Ever Says Thank You, a critically acclaimed biography of Brian Clough; The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper; and The Anatomy of Liverpool. He writes for the Guardian, Sports Illustrated and World Soccer, and he is the editor of The Blizzard.

Follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jonawils