Angels with Dirty Faces: How Argentinian Soccer Defined a Nation and Changed the Game Forever

Argentina has produced Alfredo Di Stefano, Diego Maradona, and Lionel Messi--some of the greatest soccer players of all time. The country's rich, volatile history is by turns sublime and ruthlessly pragmatic. A nation obsessed with soccer, Argentina lives and breathes the game, its theories, and its myths. Jonathan Wilson lived in Buenos Aires, in an apartment between La Recoleta Cemetery--where the country's leading poets and politicians are buried--and the Huracaan stadium. Like his apartment, Angels with Dirty Faces lies at the intersection of politics, literature, and sport. Here, he chronicles the evolution of Argentinian soccer: the appropriation of the British game, the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Peraon led the country into isolation, a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fabol, the fusing of beauty and efficacy under Casar Luis Menotti, and the emergence of all-time greats in Maradona and Messi against a backdrop of economic turbulence.