Angels With Dirty Faces

The fully revised and updated definitive history of Argentinian football from the award-winning author of Inverting the Pyramid

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'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.