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‘One of the most revelatory sports books of the year’ SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
‘Masterful … it could be the best thing to have happened to English football in years’ TIME OUT
‘Gloriously readable, eccentric and informative’ METRO
In INVERTING THE PYRAMID, Jonathan Wilson pulls apart the finer details of the world’s game, tracing the global history of tactics, from modern pioneers right back to the beginning when chaos reigned. Along the way, he looks at the lives of great players and thinkers who shaped the sport and probes why the English, in particular, have ‘proved themselves unwilling to grapple with the abstract’.
This fifth-anniversary edition of a football modern classic has been fully updated to include an investigation of the modern-day Barcelona and how their style of play developed from Total Football, which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park and taken on by Tottenham in the 1930s. It also analyses different styles in the early British game and the changing mentality of South American football in the 1970s, as well as looking at the birth of the 3-5-2 system so prevalent today.
‘Masterful … it could be the best thing to have happened to English football in years’ TIME OUT
‘Gloriously readable, eccentric and informative’ METRO
In INVERTING THE PYRAMID, Jonathan Wilson pulls apart the finer details of the world’s game, tracing the global history of tactics, from modern pioneers right back to the beginning when chaos reigned. Along the way, he looks at the lives of great players and thinkers who shaped the sport and probes why the English, in particular, have ‘proved themselves unwilling to grapple with the abstract’.
This fifth-anniversary edition of a football modern classic has been fully updated to include an investigation of the modern-day Barcelona and how their style of play developed from Total Football, which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park and taken on by Tottenham in the 1930s. It also analyses different styles in the early British game and the changing mentality of South American football in the 1970s, as well as looking at the birth of the 3-5-2 system so prevalent today.
Reviews
A masterful work, It's all deliciously nerdy - a cross between a coaching manual and a social history - and if its publication helps foster a flowering of interest in the tactical and analytical side of the game in this country, it could be the best thing to have happened to English football in years.****
Facts and stats, plus anecdotes, interviews and Wilson's deft touch with football-speak, give colour to a subject that can be a little dry and all-too confusing for those watching (and often those picking the side).
For a detailed analysis of how a single striker became the norm throughout football, you had better read Jonathan Wilson's excellent new book about tactics.
[A] fascinating history of tactics, a book that is guaranteed to enhance your football watching; your team may still lose, but you'll have a far better idea why they did.
This must surely go down as one of the most revelatory sports books of the year, as well as one of the best, who would have thought that a book charting the history of football tactics and strategy, from the 1870s to the present day, could be so engrossing and entertaining.
Absorbing and informative
A gloriously readable, eccentric and informative trawl through the changing tactical mindsets and formations that have helped shape the beautiful game.
You will never read a more entertaining or erudite history of tactics
This is a masterful piece of research and lives up to the claim to be nothing less than "a history of football tactics"... Facinating
a fascinating analysis of the way the game has evolved tactically from the 1970s until the last season... as a summary of the first 140 years of football tactical history, it is hard to imagine a more readable or thorough effort.
