The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches

by Jonathan Wilson

Having invented the game, everything that has followed for England and its national football team has been something of an anticlimax. There was, of course, the golden summer of 1966, and the great period of English dominance on the world stage, which fell roughly between 1886 and 1900, when England won 35 of their 40 internationals ...But before long foreign teams, with their insistence on progressive 'tactics', began to pose a few questions. And much of what followed for England constituted a series of false dawns. In THE ANATOMY OF ENGLAND Jonathan Wilson seeks to place the bright spots in context. Time and again, progressive coaches have been spurned by England - technique being all very well, but what really matters is pluck and 'organised muscularity', or, to quote Jimmy Hogan's chairman at Aston Villa in 1936: 'I've no time for these theories about football. Just get the ball in the bloody net.' Wilson takes ten key England fixtures and explores how what actually happened on the pitch shaped the future of the English game. Bursting with insight and critical detail, yet imbued with a wry affection, this is a history of England like none before.

Genres: Football, Sports, Soccer, Nonfiction, History

402 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 2010

About the author

Jonathan Wilson is a British sports journalist and author who writes for a number of publications including the Guardian, the Independent and Sports Illustrated. He also appears on the Guardian football podcast, Football Weekly.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

We've waited a long time, but there are now such a lot of good books about football. In Jonathan Wilson we already have a very good writer on the sport. I think he is going to become one of the great football writers.

[Mahlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's obvious that Johnathan Wilson's Anatomy of England is a unique and magisterial work. but in my opinion it contains a couple of annoying flaws. Wilson's stated objective is to concentrate on the lesser known matches that shaped England's football evolution but how can you write a book on the history of without including 1966 or 1970? Wilson's objectivity begins to feel like negativity rather quickly, I like my football authors to be a little more positive about their subjects. These minor flaws in no way detract from a book that should be one of the cornerstones of any football fan's library. This book should be required reading for all current and future England fans, players, and especially Manager's.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It might seem odd that Wilson chose to follow up a book like Inverting the Pyramid, one with such a broad, all-encompassing sweep, with one that seems to have such a narrow focus; not merely a book about England's national team, but one that focuses on ten specific matches (many of which its readers are unlikely to have seen) to make its point. Yet, where else could he really have gone? Inverting the Pyramid picked up so many strands of thought and left them tantalizing unresolved or unexamined that, surely, the only way forward was to pick up one of those strands and run with it?

That's what The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches does; it takes a few sentences found in the chapters named 'The English Pragmatism' from Inverting the Pyramid that attempt to sum up the personality and history of English football and uses them as a launchpad for another discussion.

That in itself is great, and when the book sticks to this concept it's a compelling read. Wilson attempts to explain throughout just why and how we are so different from so many of our European neighbours, let alone the South Americans, and why we have traditionally been so slow to adapt to change. As part of this, he also examines some of the nation's ongoing rivalries (particularly with Argentina), some of the more influential figures in the team's history and the negative influence they may have had (I was pleased to find that Wilson' hatred of Charles Reep and his refusal to ignore Alf Ramsey's multitude of flaws carried over from his last book), and the cult of personality that built up around certain figures, Paul Gascoigne especially, and why it happened.

The idea of focusing just on these ten matches holds it back a little, though. Too much of the book is given over to details of what happened during the games for my liking - if it came with a DVD where you could watch the games yourself, or even a website with clips uploaded, it wouldn't be so bad, but there's only so often you can read about an English defender losing the man he was marking before you get a little bored and wonder what this really tells us about England's team and its history. The book is meticulously researched, admittedly, and I feel the newspaper articles reacting to the games are illuminating (the national team's relationship with the media is examined throughout, and rightly so), but I think that the quotes and clippings could have been incorporated into a more free-flowing structure. Some of the games chosen just don't really seem to deserve it - the infamous 6-3 reverse against the Hungary of Kocsis, Puskás, Hidegkuti et al in 1953 and the match against Argentina in the 1966 World Cup are fair enough (and sure enough, those are the best chapters), but I have to wonder whether the 4-1 win against Holland at Euro '96, McLaren's defeat to Croatia in 2007, or the defeat to Spain in 1929 deserve the level of analysis they get here, when the points these chapters make could easily have been made in a more general overview of the tournaments or managers involved.

Still, that's a relatively minor criticism, because Wilson still makes his point well, with more than enough justification. Maybe the frustration comes from knowing that there's a lack of quality, analytical books on the England team around; when somebody comes so close to writing a book good enough to render all others irrelevant, the areas where they fall short stand out that much more. It's to Wilson's eternal credit that he comes so close though - this paints a full and vivid picture of England's national character and the way it understands and appreciates football, and how this has underpinned and contributed to all its failures and successes. It's a book that's almost reminiscent of those essay-writing classes you're made to take in college, in that it knows what point it wants to make, explains what the point is, and then makes it in a classic essay etructure (although it's obviously more complicated and delicate than that). It doesn't have the same number of eye-opening revelations or fascinating anecdotes that Inverting the Pyramid does, not does it flow quite as well, but it's a worthy follow-up to the greatest football book ever written all the same.

[Tom Deakin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilson is obviously a great writer on the sport, and I'm really enjoying going through his work, but this book did present me with two frustrations. The first being the descriptions of passages of play within games; far too often they meander on for too long to the point where it feels almost impossible to imagine what's happening in the game (numerous times throughout the book I went back to watch the passages of play and what I watched didn't even correlate with what I read). My second frustration is the over-emphasis on tactics. This might be partly because of my romantised view of the game, and I acknowledge that the English game, as so astutely laid out in Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid, has consistently been lagging behind in regards to tactics, but at times it feels as though tactics are purely at fault for England's woes. The last line of the epilogue seems to prove this over-emphasis for me, as the benefit of hindsight shows us that for as much as Capello was a tactical genius, he was possibly one of the worst England managers in my lifetime, and Wilson seems quietly confident of Capello's chances.

Regardless of these frustrations it's an excellent read and even 14 years after release still feels like it perfectly summarises the national team. Would love to read Wilson's take on the St George's Park era of England, and which games since 2010 he would choose to carry on his analysis of the history of the English team.

[David Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Wilson may be a bit of a swot, but football journalism in England is better for him. He’s a regular on the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, where his encyclopedic knowledge of football history, and his obsessive relationship with statistics is a refreshing contrast to the usual blokey pub banter one normally associates with the sport. It’s a pleasure to listen to his intelligent analysis, and this erudition extends to An Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches. His quest, laid out in the prologue, is to “understand football’s past and draw meaningful lessons from it…”. To do this he endeavours “… to hack through myths and personal recollections and go back to the sources, the games themselves, and to subject them to the sort of forensic examination that other cultural modes would apply to a poem, a drama or an overture.” With Wilson as a guide he walks us through ten illustrative matches, in each case providing much needed historical context: the form of the national team leading into the match, the key players both in the line up and not, the vision or philosophy of the team manager and how well this fit in with the mood of the nation. And then of course there is the matter of how well England played, and whether the result was a proper reflection of the standard of play or a random outcome. Ultimately Wilson concludes that “broadly speaking, English football’s great strength is its pace and physicality, and when it fails it tends to be because those elements have become over-emphasised and a headless-chickenness (sic) has taken over. And equally, when things go wrong, there will always be somebody calling for the players to show more pride or passion, while others lament the habitual technical deficiencies of the English game, and almost everybody refers back to some obscure and probably non-existent past golden age when England dominated the football world”. Coming from an Englishman it’s a bracingly honest assessment. I personally hate watching the English national team with their overblown sense of importance (“it’s coming home”) and their innate lack of understanding of how the game should be played (passing, movement, space, control). With this chasm between expectations and ability it is no wonder that England perennially disappoints. So after spending 366 pages micro-analysing ten matches over nearly 80 years - explaining all that is fundamentally wrong with English football with the cold analytical rigor of a scientist - I think Wilson let’s himself down with the feeble conclusion written just before the 2010 World Cup, that with a new continental manager Fabio Capella, this time will be different….

[Thomas Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like you have to be a bit of an England obsessive to enjoy this book, and luckily I am! For a casual fan this book would probably be too methodical and in-depth but for me I enjoyed it pretty much the whole way through. Very well researched, with a love for the game bursting from every page and often very sarcastically humourous. Would highly recommend!

[Davina Lescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a superb read - For any one that's a real England fan and historian it's a must. It has been thoroughly researched and the writing by Jonathan is very absorbing and holds your attention.
There are a few surprises in there when he talks about the earlier years of England matches, which I found very interesting.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a great island nation continually ignoring what was going on beyond its borders despite codifying the sport. Does not include recent failure (2016) or success (2018).

[Alex Margolies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good reminder before the Euros....

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the English national side, focusing on ten matches, only 2 of which I can remember (Holland 96, Croatia 07).

Very enjoyable. I think Wilson is usually very good at striking a balance between the zonal marking type stuff that can get a bit dry but is worth knowing, and the more typical narrative. He treads that line very well again here. The focus of each chapter is one of the ten games, but he does a nice job of linking them together.

8/10

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. Loved reading about the build up to each match possibly more than the match itself. Was pleased with how it focused on matches other than the most famous, or the best wins.

I did find the early stages heavy reading as I did not know the protagonists, but the book was written in a way that I was always intrigued with the next piece.

Very interesting how attitudes of the public never change.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Wilson is definitely one of the best football writers out there. His historical analysis of England's development in the football field, throughout the decades, is particularly interesting. He doesn't choose their ten best games (with the exception of England vs Holland at Euro 96), but different phases of a century of highs and lows. And then dissects them into a psychological, tactical observation of the English game.

[John Neilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but very subjective look at the England football team over the years. Did I understand the predictable feeling that England are not going to win another tournament, or have turned a corner and are more intellectually in tune with the game, no.
What it did do was look behind the football and explore some of the mentality of both the management and players.
That said, I am off to watch Hereford FC this afternoon in the conference north, so what do I know.

[Greg D'Avis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who wants to write about sports should read Wilson's oeuvre. He does it better than anyone.