Inverting The Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics

by Jonathan Wilson

Overview

"An outstanding work the [soccer] book of the decade." — Sunday Business Post

Inverting the Pyramid is a pioneering soccer book that chronicles the evolution of soccer tactics and the lives of the itinerant coaching geniuses who have spread their distinctive styles across the globe.

Through Jonathan Wilson's brilliant historical detective work we learn how the South Americans shrugged off the British colonial order to add their own finesse to the game; how the Europeans harnessed individual technique and built it into a team structure; how the game once featured five forwards up front, while now a lone striker is not uncommon.

Inverting the Pyramid provides a definitive understanding of the tactical genius of modern-day Barcelona, for the first time showing how their style of play developed from Dutch "Total Football," which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park in the 1870s and taken on by Tottenham Hotspur in the 1930s. Inverting the Pyramid has been called the "Big Daddy" (Zonal Marking) of soccer tactics books; it is essential for any coach, fan, player, or fantasy manager of the beautiful game.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568589190
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	37,190
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Wilson is the author of eight books, including Inverting the Pyramid, which was named NSC Football Book of the Year in 2009 and won the Premio Antonio Ghirelli prize as Italian soccer book of the year in 2013. His books Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football; The Anatomy of England; and The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper were shortlisted for the NSC award in 2007, 2011, and 2013. Wilson is the founder and editor of the soccer quarterly the Blizzard, writes for the Guardian, FoxSoccer, and Sports Illustrated, and is a columnist for World Soccer. He was voted Football Writer of the Year by the Football Supporters Federation in 2012.

Hometown:

Newton, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

February 26, 1950

Place of Birth:

London, England

Education:

B.A., First Class, University of Essex 1973; Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1980

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword to the Revised Edition xiii

Prologue xvii

1 From Genesis to the Pyramid 1

2 The Waltz and the Tango 21

3 The Third Back 36

4 How Fascism Destroyed the Coffeehouse 53

5 Organized Disorder 77

6 The Hungarian Connection 86

7 Harnessing the Carnival 98

8 The English Pragmatism (1) 122

9 The Birth of the New 146

10 Catenaccio 159

11 After the Angels 182

12 Total Football 204

13 Science and Sincerity 219

14 Fly Me to the Moon 235

15 The English Pragmatism (2) 255

16 The Return of the Back Three 282

17 The Coach Who Wasn't a Horse 305

18 Total Recall 320

19 Ghosts and the Machine 334

20 Pressing and Possessing 363

21 The Post-Cruyffian World 385

Epilogue 405

Bibliography 411

Index 423

Editorial Reviews

A wonderful and comprehensive treatment of this important topic. Make sure to secure the revised and updated edition, of course.”—Stan Veuge, Senior Fellow, Economic Policy, American Enterprise Institute

From the Publisher