The History of Soccer Tactics - Inverting The Pyramid

Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics

Anyone who loves the beautiful game should read this book, those obsessed with the sport should read it again. Well researched, well thought out & most certainly well worth the price.

Fascinating history of football tactics. I particularly enjoyed how the author links tactical innovations to wider cultural motifs in various places around the world.

The narrative is a little complex for people new to the sport but football nuts like me will love it.

This book is thorough, I'll give it that. However, the pace is completely off. It reads less like a book on strategy and more like a historical encyclopedia. Forgotten players whose contributions to the game were mostly accidental (sorry, but it's true) take up far too much space at the beginning.

If you were going to write a book about the development of the Corvette, how much time would you dedicate to the Model T? Not that much. Inverting the Pyramid gets better as it goes along, but it takes its sweet, sweet time to get interesting and relevant. Unfortunately, I don't think the casual fan will stick around long enough to reach the good bits.

Maybe I got spoiled reading well written, lucidly organized and scholarly books over the last several years (mostly in history and science), but I was disappointed by this book, mostly because I had high expectations of this book given the many excellent reviews it received from peer community and readers. I am only about 1/3 through the book, but I am on the verge of quitting it, or at least putting it aside for a while.

Firstly, I am disappointed by the material covered. I expected the author to convey a relatively thorough history of tactics, laid out in a primer like fashion: by explaining the logic of tactics and their importance and relevance, putting them in historical context and tracing their evolution through the years. Instead, the book has no focus. While the author tries to proceed in some very rough chronological manner, there is little to no substantive discussion of tactics at all. Instead, the author drops a lot of names (of coaches, players, other figures) and largely irrelevant and tangential anecdotes, with discussion of tactics, to the extent there is any in a given chapter, relegated to the sidelines.

Secondly, the book is disorganized in its content. While there is some transition between chapters, with later chapters making some references to earlier chapters, for the most part there are no organic connections between chapters in the book. In other words, there is no flow. Once the chapter is finished, it's on to the next chapter, with no expectation that the next chapter will naturally follow the previous one. In that sense, every chapter stands on its own, like an independent essay.

Finally, the writing style is not the most fluid one. To be sure, I have read books with even less fluid style, so it's not the worst or the driest I have ever read either. I would rank it about 3 out of 5 for fluidity.

I suppose I shouldn't have high expectations of sports books and ones written by journalists. But I do. I am used to reading scholarly and academic, nonfiction literature, so it spoiled me to expect intellectual and thoughtful content, lucidly organized and fluidly written. But this book is not it.

Sorry! Clearly the book's content is substantial and extremely thoroughly researched. However... it is so full of obscure names that an overhelming sense of name-dropping (ironic since they're obscure and not famous! :O) pervades way too many pages. It's almost as if the author is self-impressed with his knowledge, and that fact alone contributes heavily to why reading this book was a hard slog for me. That said... my point can be countered by someone saying that the author had no choice but to include all those obscure names because they are part of football history and that is what he is writing about. Then again... I tend to agree with another reviewer that parts of the book are unreadable. In short, this is not a book I will be reading again any time soon :O

If you are interested in the development of football tactics this is a good read, though can be a bit dry at times and I felt that towards the end it got kind of boring. Not really worth the money, at half the price would probably get an extra star.

This book is admirable for its erudition and its focus on the evolution of tactics from the playing fields of nineteenth century public schools to the present. One really must admire a British specialist who digs into the entire global picture of football and comes up with a relatively comprehensible narrative out of what must have been reams of club histories and match reports that probably contain very little of the information the author seeks. It is readable, informative and occasionally funny. Here comes the "but". Quality really declines toward the end, as if the author was rushing to meet a publishing deadline or simply outsourced the job to a football fan with a bizarre form of Tourrette's that forces him to spout senseless combinations of numbers such as "3-3-3-1, 4-5-1, 3-4-1-2". The next-to-last chapter is completely unreadable. Whereas other chapters developed the story of a single innovator or the situation in a single country, this one just rushed through a myriad of modern formations and discusses sweeping issues such as the disappearance of the playmaker. Another late chapter devotes incomprehensible amounts of space to an obscure polemic between a football statistician and a future England coach. The central narrative is lost completely, which is tied to another central weakness: the lack of occasional paragraphs to sum up the evolution of tactics as the long procession of teams, coaches and players parade through the foreground of the book and just as quickly disappear from view. The title "Inverting the Pyramid" is a brilliant example of this: it sums up an immense amount of information into a neat little compact literary phrase, but that kind of brilliance is somewhat absent from the rest of the book. In short, I enjoyed the book, I learned a lot from it and I will probably return to it frequently after matches, but it really could have used a little more tidying up from an editor (hopefully in a future edition).

Serious US fans interested in international soccer/football: buy this book.

A caveat: "Inverting the Pyramid" is not a good place to start your quest if you lack a real commitment to learning the history, culture, personalities, and tactics of the beautiful game, all that has brought us to the 21st century. A basic familiarity with current international club and country football is probably necessary; if you don't know who Pep Guardiola is, or whether Brazil or Italy are more defense-oriented, you'll need easy access to a search engine.

But if you're willing to stop now and then to google "Cruyff" or watch highlights from the 1950 World Cup final, this book is an invaluable resource. Focusing each chapter on a country and era in which a particular tactical form was developed and disseminated, Wilson weaves anecdotes, articles, position diagrams, and much more into a thoughtful exposition of how and why approaches came and went. I was particularly fascinated in the differences in strategy as modernity -- in terms of professional salaries, health and nutrition, Fordist skill-based preparations, and so on -- have been taken up and discarded over the years.

I got this book from a British friend as a gift, and it's transformed my understanding of the sport. It will change yours as well, if you give it a good chance.

Outstanding. The book traces the evolution of soccer tactics throughout the world, with recurring chapters on England, continental Europe, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina. The journey begins in England and Scotland in the 19th century, then expands outward.

Wilson masterfully weaves together the stories of some of the most famous teams, the formation they used, and how they played. He writes with the eye for detail of a historian and the writing skills of a novelist. Social and political tie-ins are noted as well, such as the Central European soccer culture of the 1920s and 30's that had strong Jewish roots, the influence of the Brazilian military government in 1970, and of Dutch liberalism in the late 1960s and 1970s and the great Ajax/Holland side.

The quality of his writing far exceeds the norm for sports journalism, whether he's writing about Hungary in the 1950's, the France of Zidane, or Mourinho's Chelsea.

If you've ever wondered about the subtle differences among different formations, such as 4-3-3 vs. 3-5-2 vs. 4-4-2 vs. 4-2-3-1, and the variations within those formations and why they evolved, or for example the playing style of Argentina in 1978 vs. 1986, this is the place to come.

The book dates to late 2008, and includes insights about the formations and playing style of recent and contemporary sides (Roma, Man U, Chelsea, AC Milan, African Nations Cup 2008).

Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics is an absolute must-have for anyone with any association with the beautiful game. It breaks down the game, the real action at the field, like no other text has ever done.

When it says history in its title, it really means just that, taking the technical part of the sport back to the 1870s. Every tactical innovation from every part of the world is carefully dissected, showing its influence (or lack thereof) on the modern game.

From Total Football to Barca’s intelligent passing scheme, this book explains them all in great detail. Some names like Rinus Michels are easily identified by fans, but the likes Herbert Chapman, Boris Arkadiev, Martim Francisco, and Viktor Maslov are reserved for only those hardcore supporters. That is until the reader finishes this book as these names will become very familiar and commonplace.

Tactical influences came from just about everywhere, from Scotland to Brazil to Uruguay to Argentina and everything in between. Even Hungary and Russia contributed something to the sport we know today.

Scholarly research makes this a “one stop shop” for tactics and the history of the game. It brings dozens of texts and all the experts together in one place. It truly is a definitive, yet easy to follow, resource for football tactics. Players, coaches, historians, and fans can all find something to take away from this incredible read. All of this is just in time for the World Cup in Brazil.

Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics is an absolute must-have for anyone with any association with the beautiful game. It breaks down the game, the real action at the field, like no other text has ever done.

When it says history in its title, it really means just that, taking the technical part of the sport back to the 1870s. Every tactical innovation from every part of the world is carefully dissected, showing its influence (or lack thereof) on the modern game.

From Total Football to Barca’s intelligent passing scheme, this book explains them all in great detail. Some names like Rinus Michels are easily identified by fans, but the likes Herbert Chapman, Boris Arkadiev, Martim Francisco, and Viktor Maslov are reserved for only those hardcore supporters. That is until the reader finishes this book as these names will become very familiar and commonplace.

Tactical influences came from just about everywhere, from Scotland to Brazil to Uruguay to Argentina and everything in between. Even Hungary and Russia contributed something to the sport we know today.

Scholarly research makes this a “one stop shop” for tactics and the history of the game. It brings dozens of texts and all the experts together in one place. It truly is a definitive, yet easy to follow, resource for football tactics. Players, coaches, historians, and fans can all find something to take away from this incredible read. All of this is just in time for the World Cup in Brazil.

This is one of the most compelling non-fiction books I've read recently. I know nothing about soccer and rarely venture even to watch the game. However, Wilson brings the sport alive across time and geography in a brilliant way that may make me a fan. Moreover, it made me wish there were books like this on every sport.

A key takeaway for me after reading this: form is key to function, function is subject to individuality, individuality without form or function is meaningless. Time and again, Wilson shows that national teams began with a form that determined how the side functioned, which then led to individuals who changed how the game is played. He also shows how national teams develop their own characters that have endured throughout the sport's history. This is a unique way to look at a game, and the world.

Finally, his final argument: namely, that the evolution of the sport going forward will be determined by how teams train and how viewers wish to experience the game is one that I'm still mulling over weeks after finishing the work.

I applaud this unbiased and perceptive analysis of tactical evolution of football. That the East European football has established its own legitimate tradition is unequivocally accepted by experts all over the world. I was extremely lucky to have had first-hand experience in learning coaching techniques from Maslov and Lobanovsky. However, Boris Arkadiev's Football Tactics written in the early fiftes is truly and veritably the bible for any aspiring coach. This book was voted one of the ten best ever written on the subject by the 4-4-2 Magazine a few years ago. It's amazing to read about the mixed (man-to-man and zonal defending), overlapping fullbacks, defending in depth, transition and counter transition group and individual tactics. Unfortunately, neither this book nor Lobanovsky's seminal Modeling of Games and Practices has been translated into English(I have my own English versions of both for my personal use exclusively). The unmitigated passion that Lobanovsky had for "total football" has however generated a lot of controversy; relentless full pitch pressure required radically different training protocols based on periodization and cyclical algorithms. Wilson in his praise for Lobanovsky's methods however, doesn't spend much time elaborating on such crucial issues as player career longevity, susceptibility to injuries, energy systems depletion with diminishing chances of full recovery, and a host of other problems in the wake of "total football" revolution. Lobanovsky's dictum - everything in football can and must be quantified has limited his choice of players resulting in denied opportunities for those gifted individuals who refused to conform to Cartesian rigidity. Oddly, Dynamo Kiev FC switched to zonal defending a la Sacchi only a few years ago, preferring the time-tested libero, and ocassionally experimenting with two sweepers. Lobanovsky's system worked perfectly at club level with the "colonel" exercising complete control over players in a barrack-style environment. For the late sage choosing between the system to fit the available talent or imposing a system on the players at his disposal was no-brainer. It was uncanny to watch the implementation of training algorithms churned out by the late Dr.Zelentzov in conjuction with Skinnerian motivational techniques. And yet, on rare ocassions Lobanovsky's seeming arrogance and imperviousness gave way to manifestations of refined humor and subtle fatalism. Like his favorite toast - Let's drink to the success of our doomed enterprise. The coach whose team had demolished Barcelona with an aggregate score of 7:0 must be quietly chuckling from the bench on a cloud.

In INVERTING THE PYRAMID: THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL TACTICS, Jonathan Wilson traces the history of football tactics from the sport's beginnings up to the present day. He covers the entire globe, branching out with little historical bias to anywhere and everywhere that tactical innovations first occurred, and does an admirable job of weaving the history of those innovations into a coherent narrative. This is probably the best treatment on the history of football tactics that exists, and is a genuine classic of football literature.

Fair warning: the book assumes a fair amount of knowledge of football history on the part of the reader.

The differences between success and failure in football can be quite marginal and there is room to dispute the value of tactics compared to other determinants of team success, but Wilson examines his subject with insight and subtlety and argues a very good case for the primacy of tactics in the history and practice of the sport.

This is definitely a book for the committed fan but if you are a committed fan, you'll definitely enjoy this book. The quality of writing is very good, well above the level of the great majority of sports journalism, and Wilson appears to be a very thorough researcher. The bibliography is impressive and Wilson deserves credit for grinding through and analyzing a large volume of material, some recondite in the extreme (club histories) and a great deal that must have been rather boring to read (memoirs by famous managers). The result is an interesting, comprehensive history of soccer tactics since the initial development of the game. There are a couple of recurrent themes. Wilson, as befits a Brit, is rather concerned with the state of British football, and the perpetual conservatism of British coaches and managers runs throughout the book. The corollary, the birth of innovation outside Britain outside Britain, even when fathered by expat British coaches, is another theme. Wilson also illustrates well how tactical changes often occurred somewhat in parallel in different countries, an interesting example of convergent evolution. Some changes occur because of rule changes, Herbert Chapman's development of the WM formation with stopper center half being an example. Others arise as logical tactical adaptations, for example, the development of the flat back four or the withdrawn center forward. Some tactical changes are set in train by others. With teams playing a flat back four, traditional wing play became obsolete. Some tactics, like the Swiss precursor to the sweeper, arose because of unique circumstances, in this case, a semi-professional league, and then spread.

There are some real surprises in Wilson's account. Who would have thought that the Soviet Union would host football innovations? In the 1950s, intelligent Soviet coaches were emphasizing aggressive forward play and diagonal runs. By the 70s, Ukrainian coaches were developing the aggressive full field pressing style characteristic of much of the modern game. Usual descriptions of Dutch total football emphasize its attacking propensity but Wilson intelligently points out that this was predicated on aggressive defending, pressing, and playing a high line and aggressive offside trap.

I think Wilson does make one significant omission about something that has influenced soccer significantly in the recent decades - the development of goalie play. The nearly universal existence of big, athletic keepers with decent ball skills is certainly one of the factors that permits the modern pressing game.

and free from the typical vices of sports writing: wisecracking humor, ham-handed poetry, nostalgia, personal anecdotes, and padding. It does occasionally try to link play on the field to what was happening in society outside the stadium, but not in the "in those dour times, the nation was looking for heroes," kind of way.

The book will teach the soccer fan to appreciate the game more. The open-minded non-fan might also learn what soccer is all about.

I honestly think this book was great. It talked about the beginning of soccer and how the play style changed as it evolved throughout history. It also talked about the different players, managers, and people who also helped shape the sport. If you do not like soccer then I recommend you stay away from the book since you may find it boring.

As a newbie to studying football tactics, I found this to be a great and somewhat surprising history of formations. It was fun for me to imagine what a very early match must have looked like--perhaps more like rugby. Also great sketches of the various characters who made the tactical advances in the game.

Not for everyone, and that's why only four stars, but if you're interested in the history of soccer football, then this is for you.

This is an excellent, highly readable and enjoyable book on the evolution of football tactics. Whilst expanding any readers historical knowledge of the game it will also greatly increase the readers understanding and appreciation of the modern game. The book weaves in stories of players, personalities, managers and historical events with tactical/formation diagrams and descriptions of the way key historical games and teams played.

It is written in such a way that it is very accessible, it is not a essay or lecture, and it keeps its subject matter interesting at all times. You don't need any advanced understanding of the game of football to enjoy this book. In short - don't be put off if you think this book may be too technical or too dry a subject. The writing style and structure easily avoid any such pitfalls.

Although this book is not a coaching manual it can play a role in any coaches collection as it provides a wonderful insight into some of the methods of play and pros and cons of various systems. I have found this book to be an important reference both with coaching and increasing my enjoyment in watching professional games.

An interesting history of football tactics from the origins of the game in the late 19th Century to the present day, well-written if a little dry and heavy-going in places. Unfortunately, the Kindle e-book version of the text is poorly edited, riddled with typos, missing punctuation marks and incorrect capitalization of words (real Madrid, for example),making this edition of the book hard to recommend. At £5.31 this eBook is not cheap, especially for such a poorly edited text. This isn't the first sloppily edited eBook I've come across on the store, and it really seems that publishers of eBooks need to sort out their editing processes.

An excellent history of football tactics and innovation. Mr Wilson takes the reader across the globe to discover the people, ideas & culture that lead us to the modern beautiful game. One of the best football books I've read.

This is simply an extraordinary tome. It provides a thorough, dispassionate, yet thoroughly engaging, history of the tactics of football. From the chaos of the fields of nineteenth century England to the modern day Premiership and Serie A, Mr. Wilson traces the development of the beautiful game in each different region with an understanding of how the regional culture created the style of play.
As an American, who played high school soccer in a 2-3-5 in the 1970's, to understand how and why that system went out of vogue in Europe in the 1920's (!) was an eye opener. Further, the implications for the state of the game in the United States and the glaring need for the development of a national "style", for instance a fusion of Latin and Western European tactics, is appallingly obvious.

An excellent history of football tactics and innovation. Mr Wilson takes the reader across the globe to discover the people, ideas & culture that lead us to the modern beautiful game. One of the best football books I've read.