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Behind the Curtain: Football in Eastern Europe

Jonathan Wilson, Jonathan Wilson Ltd

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Prose: non-fiction, Football (Soccer, Association football)

Reissue.

From the war-ravaged streets of Sarajevo, where turning up for training involved dodging snipers' bullets, to the crumbling splendour of Budapest's Bozsik Stadium, where the likes of Puskas and Kocsis masterminded the fall of England - the landscape of Eastern Europe has changed immeasurably since the fall of communism.

Jonathan Wilson has travelled extensively behind the old Iron Curtain, viewing life beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall through the lens of football. Where once the state-controlled teams of the Eastern bloc passed their way with crisp efficiency to considerable success on the European and international stages, today the beautiful game in the East has been opened up to the free market and throughout the region a sense of chaos pervades. The threat of totalitarian interference no longer remains, but in its place mafia control is generally accompanied with a crippling lack of funds.

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Jonathan Wilson

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.

Follow him on Twitter: @jonawils

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