Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina

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Argentina is a nation obsessed with football, and Jonathan Wilson, having lived there on and off during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the five phases of Argentinian football: the appropriation of the British game; the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Perón led the country into isolation; a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fútbol; the fusing of beauty and efficacy under César Luis Menotti; and the ludicrous (albeit underachieving) creative talent of recent times. This is an excellent book, which offers a potted social and political history of Argentina as well as of its football. As the title suggests, Argentinian football has often been characterised by the spirit of the ‘Pibe’, which is a picaresque attitude to life (exemplified by a certain player above all). Jonathan Wilson is probably one of the best scholars of the game. This book is a comprehensive, time-spanning, and thorough look at Argentinian soccer. It doesn't seem to miss anything, and covers all of the most important aspects of the country's footballing history.

Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison… Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison…

The author traces the early disappointment of losing the first 1930 world cup final through to a humiliating defeat in the 1958 World Cup, at which point the national team decided to forego the traditional flair-based individual game (‘la nuestra’) for a more defensive and muscular game, one which was often called ‘anti-futbol’ (and essentially based on the Italian defensive style of the 60s). This style was utilised in the 1966 world cup and came up against England in the quarter-finals, when, after a bad-tempered match, their captain Antonio Rattin was sent off, and refused to go, and the team were called ‘animals’ by Sir Alf Ramsey – the author points out that it was not even clear what Rattin had done, and that England were hardly blameless themselves. This was the first of many tough matches against England in major tournaments, with the most famous being the 1986 World Cup match, just after the Falklands War, which Diego Maradona won single-handedly (literally), proving himself to be the ultimate ‘Pibe’ – aside from punching the ball in (a ball which Shilton should have got to, the author notes), he also scored the greatest individual goal in world cup history. Maradona was the personification of the Pibe tradition, which was almost designed for him, the author notes - a poor boy, touched with genius, but fatally flawed. The book spends a fair but of time on the decline and fall of Diego, but rather less on the other great Argentinian genius, Lionel Messi. Messi is the other side of the coin, having left Argentina at a young age to play with FC Barcelona and never returning, except to play for the national team, with whom he has never shone in the way Maradona did. He is, many Argentinians say, a Catalan at heart – brilliant and a teamplayer, but not a true Pibe and not adored like Diego was. p. 240: Carmine Giuliano: a former Italian Camorrista who was the boss of the powerful Giuliano clan based in the district of Forcella, Naples. p. 201: "Throughout the tournament, the magazine had shown startling disdain for the other nations. The Dutch, for instance, were explicitly linked with drugs, homosexuality, and excess and Scots with alcohol." Miller III, Randy. "Angles with Dirty Faces Blu-Ray (Warner Archive Collection)". Blu-Ray.com . Retrieved 15 December 2022.NSJ Staff. "Angels with Dirty Faces", Nevada State Journal, p. 2, published November 26, 1938. Retrieved May 19, 2017. Although dense, certain sections of the book are compelling, namely the more contemporary chapters; the fury of Argentina‘s World Cup victory on home soil in 1978, the enigma and addiction of El Diego, the journey of Marcelo Bielsa, and of course, the rise of Leo Messi and his seismic impact on modern football from the mid-2000s. Angels with Dirty Faces is considered by some to be one of the finest films in Cagney's career, and a "true example of brilliant American cinema." [3] In 2008, it was shortlisted by the American Film Institute for selection in its list of the top 100 movies of the last 100 years. [45] In 2013, Steven Van Zandt named it as one of his "most favorite mob movies" in an article for Rolling Stone. [46] Two years later, Slant Magazine named it 67th in a list of the "100 Best Film Noirs of All Time". [47] Fernett, Gene (1973). Hollywood's Poverty Row 1930–1950. United States: Coral Reef. ISBN 0914042017.

Angels with Dirty Faces: Wilson, Jonathan: 9781568585512 Angels with Dirty Faces: Wilson, Jonathan: 9781568585512

And Argentina, since the start of its football journey in a delayed match played between 22 players of British origin, has struggled with identity – especially when it came to its European origins. Like a rebellious kid making art in their room, the country battled football hooliganism, political maneuvering and a temperamental individuality seeped into its game plan to emerge with fragments of promise that didn’t always deliver. p. 8: "Alumni were the last of the great Anglo-Argentinian sides, insisting that their aim was to uphold "British value" as much as it was to win and to 'play well without passion.'" Every story begins somewhere. And for this one, it begins with Watson Hutton circa 1880, and continues on Motti then Maradona then Messi. The greatest intrigue lies at the heart of the country, as you come to understand not just the frailties and triumphs of the national team – but also of the fragmented club structure and the battles of amateurism and professionalism. Perhaps the defining theme of this book is that Argentina, invariably perceived as an El Dorado waiting to be discovered and exploited, has never lived up to that Utopian potential, thus engendering disillusionment and cynicism. At the turn of the century it was buoyant, viewed more favourably than Australia or Canada, and in 1928 its GNP was the eighth highest in the world per capita. By 2012 it was only sixtieth, the result of recurrent military rule, political dysfunction and economic crises; in 1978 as the country staged its first and only World Cup to date under the shadow cast by its ruling Junta the New Statesman magazine described its failure as a nation as the greatest political mystery of the 20th century.A highly personalized and intimate portrait by a courageous writer who goes beyond clichés and platitudes. This book is a bracing, clear-eyed exploration of one of the most important issues of our time: the growing incarceration rate in the US, and the consequences of this for citizens both inside and outside prison walls.” —T.J. English, New York Times best-selling author of Where the Bodies Were Buried and The Westies

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Christianson, Scott (2001). Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House. United States: NYU Press. ISBN 0814716164. Wilson says ‘I wanted to include the theory and place the sport in its social, economic and political context, and I wanted to include the people, the players and coaches whose lives are so remarkable that they seem to have fallen from a magic-realist novel, but I didn’t want to stint on the football, on the games and the goals that actually make us watch in the first place, on the culture that provides the currency in which so much of Argentinian life is transacted. But while this is primarily a history of football, so entwined are the political and socio-economic strands, so inextricably is football bound up with all public life, that this is also a book about Argentina’.You know you’re in for a detailed account when the prologue goes into the history of Don Pedro de Mendoza setting off across the Atlantic from Cadiz in 1535. The Spaniard founded Buenos Aires in 1536 and called it Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Aire (Our Lady St. Mary of the Good Air). Robertson, Dr. James C. (1993). The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael Curtiz. United Kingdom: Routledge. ISBN 0415068045.