Inverting The Pyramid Paperback – August 6, 2024

I have been reading through this book which is almost the size of the bible. It's loaded full of detailed stories of soccer strategies and ideas. Really good to help a new comer be aware of what has come before. It also give me ideas for things we could try differently in various situations.

Great book, a must read for any coach as it will help them understand the evolution of tactics.

This is, exactly as titled, a history of football tactics, from the unorganized scrum of the mid 19th century through the 'pyramid' days of 2-3-5, to the myriad formations of today. I do not know enough about the history of soccer tactics to speak directly to the accuracy of the history given, but it feels authoritative. It starts in England, switches to Scotland, transfers to Central Europe, on to South America with special attention paid to Brazil, then back to Italy, etc. This focus on how the game spread around the globe and how regional differences were introduced that then went on to have international implications and influences.The book, written by an Englishman, is Anglocentric, but England birthed the country and with the growth of the BPL is sort of the epicenter of the soccer world. All in all a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in learning the history of how soccer is played.

As a long time American soccer player, I was never taught much in the way of tactical nuance during my playing days. So I wanted to learn what i was missing (maybe I could teach my kids those things my own coaches didnt know about). This book is a fantastic history of soccer tactics. It is not a dry read either. If you are looking for a more techinical discussion of tactics, perhaps you need to read other books, but before you can develop into those learned treatises, it is important to understand the evolution of the modern systems and this book walks you through that history. Afterall, the logic of modern tactics is better understood when you see where they came from, historically speaking.

This is not only the best soccer book i ever read (and i have read lots), it is one of the best books i have ever read. It is clearly aimed at the serious football fan or coach who actually cares about the subtleties of the game and also has an interest in the history that has underlain the evolution of the game. It is actually as much of a history of the ideas as it is about the ideas and tactics themselves. I just pulled it off my bookshelf now and i want to go read it again (that would be the fourth time i think). The global nature of the game and its influences are lovingly described from Rio to Moscow via Ipswich. A great book, a must-read for any serious-minded soccer fan. Jonathan Wilson has taken sports writing and soccer writing to a different level.....congratulations Professor Wilson!

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).

The mother of all football tactics literature. It's very well written, taking you in a journey from the very beginnings of the sport, up to 2008 and its most recent tactical innovations. If you're a football nut like me you'll get such a high from reading this. Not only are the well known schools of cattenaccio and tiki-taka well presented, but much deserved attention is paid to the coffee shop football era and the contributions made by teams and coaches within the USSR.For the casual fan it might present you with an opportunity to finally fall in love with the beautiful game. Mr. Jonathan Wilson has done a fantastic job taking football tactics right from the blackboard to paper, all without leaving anything behind.