Angels With Dirty Faces ─ How Argentinian Soccer Defined a Nation and Changed the Game Forever

Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Román Riquelme, Sergio Agüero, Lionel Messi... Argentina is responsible for producing some of the greatest soccer players of all time. Their rich, volatile history is by turns both sublime and ruthlessly pragmatic. Argentina is a nation obsessed with soccer, and Jonathan Wilson, having lived there off and on during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the five phases of Argentinian soccer: the appropriation of the British game; the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Perón led the country into isolation; a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fútbol; the fusing of beauty and efficacy under César Luis Menotti; and the ludicrous (albeit underachieving) creative talent of recent times. More than any other nation, Argentina lives and breathes soccer, 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 one of the world’s greatest soccer-playing nations and its paradoxes.

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 also writes for The Guardian, Sports Illustrated, and World Soccer, and he is the editor of The Blizzard.

Follow him on Twitter at: @jonawils