Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina

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He also highlights Argentina’s two most internationally acclaimed players, Maradona and Messi, which I always love to read. The greatest intrigue lies at the heart of the country, as you come to understand not just the frailties and triumphs of the national team – but also of the fragmented club structure and the battles of amateurism and professionalism. Although Wilson can be sometimes open to criticism that his columns in The Guardian are prone to over-thinking, they are always well-written and worth your time in reading them. My recollection of that tournament was, above all, the teams taking to the pitch in a blizzard of paper confetti thrown by the fans from above, and of Kempes barrelling through the Dutch defence in the final to score across this paper carpet.

It is like the history of the Argentinian national team, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Newel Old Boys, Estudiante, Velez Sarsfield, etc, all combined into one big narration. Darby, whose parents keep her locked in her bedroom, and who arrives pale and terrified one Christmas Eve.Imarisha pushes us to give up easy distinctions between innocence and guilt, good and evil, and to experience punishment and imprisonment as the messy, complex systems they are.

Wilson has several excellent books which I guess sit on the shelves of those whose interest in the game expands beyond ranting about the latest poor result etc. In the light of subsequent events, it is amusing to learn that in 1948 the Argentinian football association imported eight British referees to help them raise the standard of officiating. Mostly, though, in his densely detailed but absorbing book, Wilson reminds us of the better things: those we can only regret having missed, like the five-man River Plate forward line of the 1940s, known as La Máquina, and their equally devastating successors of the 50s, whose popular nickname gives his book its title, and those, from Ardiles to Agüero, we may have been lucky enough to witness at first hand, all the beautiful fruit of a bittersweet history. It is within this chaos that multiple generations of talents emerge, from a population of just 25 million people.

The story Wilson tells from that point onwards is broadly one of a conflict between those two tendencies within the Argentinian game. Angels with Dirty Faces did the double of football book and history book of the year at the Polish Sports Book Awards in 2018.

His latest book, Angels with Dirty Faces, traces the story of football in Argentina from its development and spread in the late 19th century to the present day, taking in the myriad instances of triumph, failure, glory and disgrace which have occurred along the way. Sadly these moments are brief, and the majority of the book reads like a very thorough report of each year in the country’s footballing (and socio-political) history. 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. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. Wilson describes the Argentine national character, which like many is built upon its own myths and legends and how this is manifested within the development of the national game.But this is an intriguing read if only to see that Argentina has always been that force – a bringer of joy and sorrow at equal opportunity. The grandeur of El Monumental (home of River Plate) and La Bombonera (home of Boca Juniors) has declined to an extent and the stadiums have become relics of the past as the best Argentine players succumb to the allure (and money) that Europe has to offer. In typical Wilson style, this book chronicles the history of Argentinian football with rigorous detail and unmatched insight.