Hello and welcome to the TIFO Football Podcast Special Edition.

Yes, the first of eight special episodes releasing over the next eight weeks.

I'm Joe Devine and I'm now joined by the host of said special podcast.

It's John McKenzie.

Hi, John.

Hello.

What are you doing here, John?

I am spending eight episodes talking to some very interesting

people across the industry on a range of different topics from tactical stuff mainly, but also

touching on some geopolitical stuff. We've got a World Cup coming up as well, so we'll be talking

about that. I'm just really excited to have some interesting conversations with some interesting

people. And who's the first of those interesting people? So in today's episode, I will be talking to Jonathan Wilson, the author of Inverting the Pyramid. Hot diggedy dog. That is good. And I'll be talking all about his book and looking back over a decade to see the impact that that book has had and when he's changed his ideas on things. Can I shock you? You can. Even I've read that book. Wow. Yeah. So it's very influential, isn't it? Hmm. Well, I can't wait to hear this episode. Yeah? Me neither. We'll start it now. Yes. Okay. Okay.

Hello and welcome to Tifo Talks, our podcasts on the TIFO Football Podcast Network. I'm John McKenzie, and I'm joined today by the Godfather of Football Tactics writing. Jonathan, thank you for coming on today. Thank you very much for having me. Jonathan is obviously a football writer, the editor of the Blizzard magazine, and the author of books about Sunderland, England, Liverpool, Manchester, United, Barcelona. Then we've got some socio-historical books, so behind the curtain.

So that's all about Eastern European football.

Angels with Dirty Faces, that's about the footballing history of Argentina.

The names heard long ago, which is about the golden age of Hungarian football and how it shaped

the modern game.

The outsider, history of the goalkeeper.

You've also written a novel and a couple of biographical works as well, so Brian Clough biography and then a book which has just come out. We're going to talk about a little bit later, two brothers, the life and lives of Bobby and Jackie Charlton. But the book that we're going to focus on mainly today, inverting the pyramid, which I suppose is your seminal work. I suppose it's the thing that

you're best known for looking forward to having a good chat about that today. That was released in 2008,

and then there was a second edition which came out in 2014, but it's obviously well over 10 years

since you first published Inverting the Pyramid. So maybe to start with, just a retrospective

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