Collection of 5 short stories – The Little Princess, No Place for Nathan, Daddy’s Boy, The Wild Child and Scarlett’s Secret – previously available as individual e-shorts. But those English fans who were watching, either in the stadium or on television, will remember the sense of disbelief that a sportsman could bring a match to a standstill by refusing to accept the rule of authority. Along with the World Cups there is, of course, Peron, Maradona, the Falklands, Messi and all those great Argentinian clubs like Boca, River Plate, Indipendiente (king of the cups), Racing, San Lorenzo (Pope Francis is a fan) and Estudiantes.

p. 93: "It soon became special, though: in retrospect, the victory of the Angels with Dirty Faces in Peru was the last great flowering of la nuestra, the elaborate, free-flowing attacking style of play that Argentinian soccer came to see as characteristic of its golden age. Wilson provides a wonderful narrative as to how the game took off and why – Maradona, dictators, corruption, Messi et al are all in here.

From the freeway, the city’s suburbs struck me as rigid, seemingly infinite juts of concrete, like a Georges Braque piece dressed in orange neon. Between an early goal by Juan Ramón Verón – father of Juan Sebastián, later to play for both clubs – and the unavailing late equaliser by Willie Morgan, many other brutalities went unpunished. The book ends with a lament for the fact that nearly all the good, not just the great, Argentinian players now play abroad and the domestic league is a mediocre affair, played in poor stadia, mirroring the real economy’s decline and dependence on exports. ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is the definitive history of a great footballing nation and its many paradoxes.

It is like the history of the Argentinian national team, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Newel Old Boys, Estudiante, Velez Sarsfield, etc, all combined into one big narration. He also highlights Argentina’s two most internationally acclaimed players, Maradona and Messi, which I always love to read. And perhaps that’s Argentina in a nutshell, a wonderful mix of chaos, highs and lows, perfectly reflected in its football.The strongest section of the book is the second, which covers the ‘Golden Age’ of Argentinian football from 1930-1958. p. 209: "Cornejo took him to see Cacho Paladino and he gave Maradona a course of pills and injections to build him up.

The history of Argentinian football comes with numerous false dawns, and one glorious period in which, led by a diminutive and divisive genius, they were the conquerors of the World. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The referee Rudolf Kreitlin is escorted off the pitch by police at the end of a volatile World Cup quarter-final at Wembley after Argentina’s captain Antonio Rattín had been sent off in the defeat by England. From the first time Jose Alcosta shakes a football figure’s hand to mix politics and football, to campaigns being run on the strength of sporting accomplishments – Argentina traverses a philosophical landscape.Maradona’s shadow is long in the last 40 years of Argentinian football, and he carries way more love at home than his closest comparison, Lionel Messi, who left Argentina aged 13. From the pioneering Scotsman, Alexander Watson Hutton, who gets the ball rolling in this football-obsessed land through to the totemic ‘pibe’ figures of Diego and Leo, an enriching and educational read. In exploring these through Kakamia, Mac, and herself, Imarisha not only sees things big and small, but also how those things work together. Wilson does provide some insights into how the backgrounds and personal lives of these two very different characters have impacted how they play and understand the game, and contextualises Maradona as fitting perfectly into the Argentinian archetype of a ‘pibe’ (an urchin-like figure who overcomes an impoverished background thanks to skill and cunning). Jonathan Wilson, doyen of the new football writing, has written an impressive history of Argentinian football which I greatly enjoyed.