Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina

Name: Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina
Rating: 4.388888835906982 (18 reviews)

Jonathan Wilson

Aug 2016 · Hachette UK

4.4

18 reviews

Ebook

576

Pages

Eligible

Ratings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More

Switch to the audiobook

About this ebook

'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

Ratings and reviews

4.4

18 reviews

Rhesus Park

May 16, 2019

Argentinian football has been caught in an eternal struggle between beauty and brawn, a contrast summed up in the two men who led them to World Cup glory. While the idealistic Cesar Menotti masterminded success on home soil in 1978 by refusing to sacrifice his attacking principles, Carlos Bilardo's pragmatism and win-at-all costs mentality delivered a second triumph in 1986. These two coaches have come to symbolise the battle for Argentina's footballing soul but Jonathan Wilson's excellent book delves far d

About the author

Jonathan Wilson is a columnist for the Guardian and the founder and editor of The Blizzard. Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics was Football Book of the Year in 2009 and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. Seven of his other books have been shortlisted for football book of the year and he has also won the Premio Antonio Ghirelli in Italy. Angels with Dirty Faces did the double of football book and history book of the year at the Polish Sports Book Awards in 2018. He is a three-time recipient of the FSA Football Writer of the Year award and in 2023 was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Sunderland. He writes for the Guardian and in 2011 founded The Blizzard, which he still edits. He is also the co-presenter of the football history podcast It Was What It Was. Twitter/X: @jonawils

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets

Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.

Laptops and computers

You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

eReaders and other devices

To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.

Report illegal content