Angels with dirty faces

For someone who once cried over a disallowed goal and read Borges with Davoo echoing in the background.

The book opens with a scene that feels like a history class fable: Don Pedro de Mendoza crossing the Atlantic and founding “Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre” in 1536.

Jonathan Wilson doesn’t start with Maradona. He starts at the beginning.

Because to understand Argentine football, you first have to understand the country.

And if you want to understand the country… well, good luck with that.

“The history of Argentine football begins, in a way, with Pedro de Mendoza’s expedition in 1536…”

That’s when you realize: this isn’t going to be a chronology. It’s going to be an autopsy.

A cultural thesis written with an English heart and a criollo soul.

Argentina, you wouldn’t understand

I first read the phrase on a forum — written in all caps, without accents.

Then it popped up on T-shirts, ironic tweets, bathroom graffiti, and even IMF reports (though there, it came without quotation marks).

“Argentina, you wouldn’t understand.” ^[1]

Jonathan Wilson didn’t spray-paint it on a wall.

He investigated it.

Actually, he autopsied it.

“To a certain extent, being Argentine meant supporting the national football team.”

That’s not a metaphor. It’s emotional statistics.

Because in Argentina, nationality isn’t filed in government offices — it’s renewed every four years in front of the TV.

With your hand over your heart — or your drink.

With teary eyes, sometimes even before the anthem.^[2]

You’re not Argentine because you were born in Córdoba or carry a DNI.

You’re Argentine if you screamed a goal with a stranger, hugged a waiter in a bar, turned off the TV after a loss and swore you wouldn’t watch again — and then watched anyway.

Wilson, born in Sunderland, understood this better than many born in Avellaneda.

Not because he became a fan — but because he listened.

To archives, dusty newspapers, AM interviews, goals on VHS tapes.

He drew an emotional map of a country that doesn’t know how to explain itself, but sure as hell knows how to cry.

Football as a shattered mirror

Wilson writes like someone with a library in his head and an AM radio in his chest.

He traces over a century of history — from football’s arrival in 1867 ^[3] to Messi crying after the Copa América Centenario — with an overwhelming depth of detail.

He dives into Peronist politics through the transfer of José Manuel Moreno.

Explains 1970s state violence through the stadium stands.

Narrates the Falklands War — and how the 1986 World Cup wasn’t revenge: it was storytelling.

“In Argentina, every pass is a declaration, every foul a thesis, every goal a catharsis.”

This is where Wilson becomes obsessive, in the best possible way: interviewing, cross-referencing, archiving.

He cites Eduardo Archetti, digs through old Crítica columns, and stitches together a history that leaves no corner unexamined.

Maradona, Menotti, Bilardo: the holy trinity

At the heart of the book lies a battle: Menotti vs. Bilardo.

Two ways of seeing football. Two worldviews.

And between them — almost as if born from their clash — stands Diego Armando Maradona.

“He was the man who took Argentina to heaven while dragging his own soul through the mud.”

The Napoli chapter reads like both a court case and a love letter.

The dictatorship chapter is a history lesson in disguise.

Wilson doesn’t glorify Diego — he contextualizes him.

He tells it like only someone who spent years doing the homework can.

Racing’s cats and other documented truths

In 1967, Racing Club beat Celtic to win the Intercontinental Cup.

Legend has it that bitter rivals from Independiente buried seven dead cats under the pitch, cursing the club for 50 years.

Racing descended in 1983 and spiraled into chaos — until an exorcism in 1998.

They won the league again in 2001, after 35 years of drought.

Meanwhile, Boca Juniors chose their iconic colors after a match loss forced them to change jerseys.

They decided the next ship to enter the harbor would choose the colors. It was Swedish.

Blue and yellow. The rest is myth. ^[4]

Epilogue: the pitch as a nation

Angels with Dirty Faces isn’t a book to understand football.

It’s a book to understand Argentina.

Or — maybe — to accept that you never fully will.

Because Argentina isn’t an equation.

It’s a last-minute goal.

A missed penalty.

A Diego who falls, and gets back up.

And for me — someone who grew up watching Tevez play like every touch was a personal vendetta, and who now has to explain to foreign friends why Riquelme walked the pitch like he owned time — this book was something strange and precious:

A way to see home from the outside.

Told in the secret language all Argentines understand — even the ones who claim they don’t care about football.

In the end, Argentina isn’t meant to be understood.

We don’t understand it ourselves.

How could anyone else?

But if we’re ever going to try — if we’re ever going to explain this beautiful chaos of a country — then we might as well start here.

With the ball.

With the dirt.

With football.