Whether it's Terry Venables keeping his wife up late at night with diagrams on scraps of paper spread over the eiderdown, or the classic TV sitcom of moving the salt & pepper around the table top in the transport cafe, football tactics are now part of the fabric of everyday life. Steve McLaren's switch to an untried 3-5-2 against Croatia will probably go down as the moment he lost his slim credibility gained from dropping David Beckham; Jose Mourinho, meanwhile, was often brought to task for trying to smuggle the long ball game back into English football. Here Jonathan Wilson pulls apart the modern game, traces the world history of tactics from modern pioneers right back to beginning where chaos reigned. Along the way he looks at the lives of great players and thinkers who shaped the game, and probes why the English, in particular, have 'proved themselves unwilling to grapple with the abstract'.

About the Author

Jonathan Wilson has been the Football Correspondent of the Financial Times, and currently writes for The Independent and Independent on Sunday. Behind the Curtain was his (very well received) first book.

Prizes

Football tactics are at the heart of endless pub conversations, newspaper debates, half-time ruminations ... yet Andy Gray's illustrated 'coffee table' book aside there has yet to be anything approaching a comprehensive, world history of tactics. Jonathan Wilson's Behind the Curtain: Travels in East European football narrowly missed the William Hill shortlist, but received huge critical acclaim.

Reviews

This tome delivers a top-class, thorough, and, most importantly, engaging discussion of football tactics. Boring topic, great cover, revelatory book. Buy it. MAXIM an outstanding work, cerebral and fully engaging...the football book of the decade SUNDAY BUSINESS POST the perfect book for an serious follower of football who wants to be enlightened, educated and entertained GOOD BOOK GUIDE