Inverting the Pyramid

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What to expect

'MASTERFUL' Time Out
'REVELATORY' Scotland on Sunday
'GLORIOUSLY READABLE' Metro
'FASCINATING' Independent
'EXCELLENT' Telegraph
'ABSORBING' Guardian

Winner of the British Sports Book Awards
Football Book of the Year

The fifteenth anniversary edition, fully revised and updated, of Jonathan Wilson's modern classic.

In the modern classic, 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.

Fully revised and updated, this fifteenth-anniversary edition analyses the evolution of modern international football, including the 2022 World Cup, charting the influence of the great Spanish, German and Portuguese tacticians of the last decade, whilst pondering the effects of footballs increased globalisation and commercialisation.

Critics Review

  • 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.****

    TIME OUT - book of the week

  • 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).

    CQ

  • 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.

    SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

  • [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.

    INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

  • 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.

    SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

  • Absorbing and informative

    GUARDIAN ON LINE

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