Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics

About the Book

'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 football's increased globalisation and commercialisation.

About the Author :
Jonathan Wilson is a columnist for the Guardian and the founder and editor of The Blizzard. Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics was Football Book of the Year in 2009 and was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. Seven of his other books have been shortlisted for football book of the year and he has also won the Premio Antonio Ghirelli in Italy. Angels with Dirty Faces did the double of football book and history book of the year at the Polish Sports Book Awards in 2018. He is a three-time recipient of the FSA Football Writer of the Year award and in 2023 was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Sunderland. He writes for the Guardian and in 2011 founded The Blizzard, which he still edits. He is also the co-presenter of the football history podcast It Was What It Was.

Twitter/X: @jonawils

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. 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". Fascinating. A fascinating analysis of the way the game has evolved tactically from the 1870s... as a summary of the first 140 years of football tactical history, it is hard to imagine a more readable or thorough effort. Here, for the first time in decades, is a top-notch football book, on how football is actually played on the pitch.