Jonathan Wilson is one of the world’s top football writers and everything he touches turns to gold. Wilson’s most recognized work, Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics, is considered by many (including us) to be one of the finest books on football ever written. The same can be said for Angels with Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina and The Barcelona Legacy: Guardiola, Mourinho, and the Fight for Football’s Soul. Wilson has written a number of others that are world-class, but we now have a new favorite.
It is Wilson’s newest offering from Bold Type Books, The Names Heard Long Ago: How the Golden Age of Hungarian Soccer Shaped the Modern Game.
This text is a special one as history, mystery, tragedy, and football are brought together in a single book. The sheer number of players, coaches, and teams covered is astonishing, but what is even more impressive is the amount of intense research that had to have gone into this book. We aren’t talking about Googling some information or doing some interviews over the phone. Wilson has created the definitive text on Hungarian football by compiling information that can’t be found nowhere else and he did it through his own hard work.
Honestly we didn’t know much about Hungarian football other than Ferenc Puskás before reading this, but we certainly know lots more now. Most importantly, we learned that the Hungarian influence extended to places far and near, from Argentina to Italy to Sweden and everywhere in between. We learned about the life, times, and careers of some incredibly important people like Jimmy Hogan, Imre Hirschl, and Árpád Weisz to name just a few.
Wilson’s storytelling ability is absolutely priceless and he shared tales of happiness, tragedy, death, victory, and defeat. We heard about war, the Holocaust, and a golden age of football that never got the attention it deserved.
When Puskás arrived on the global stage, Hungarian football had actually been a world leader for several decades. What many thought was the beginning of an era was actually an unprecedented run of 50+ years that was coming to a close.
In any case, Hungarian football and its influence on the world’s game was never fully appreciated, but Wilson changed that with a single text.
This is a truly brilliant book, easily the best we’ve encountered in 2019. Wilson and Bold Type Books should be very proud of what has been created. It is a text that will be discussed and referred to for many years to come.
