Book description
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 Puskás 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 - a sort of communist version of total
football - 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.
In BEHIND THE CURTAIN Jonathan Wilson goes in search of the spirit of
Hungary's 'Golden Squad' of the early fifties, charts the disintegration
of the footballing superpower that was the former Yugoslavia, follows a
sorry tale of corruption, mismanagement and Armenian cognac through the
Caucasuses, reopens the case of Russia's greatest footballer, Eduard
Streltsov, and talks to Jan Tomaszewski about an autumn night at Wembley
in 1973... With style and erudition, [Wilson] proves that football is
a metaphor, an allegory, and much more than just a game THE TIMES
Enlightening THE SCOTSMAN Jonathan Wilson is the Football
Correspondent for the Financial Times, and has travelled widely
throughout Eastern Europe.
