Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta, Juan Romn Riquelme, Sergio Agero, Lionel Messi... Argentina is responsible for producing some of the greatest soccer players of all time. Their rich, volatile history is by turns both sublime and ruthlessly pragmatic. Argentina is a nation obsessed with soccer, and Jonathan Wilson, having lived there off and on during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the five phases of Argentinian soccer: the appropriation of the British game; the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Pern led the country into isolation; a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-ftbol; the fusing of beauty and efficacy under Csar Luis Menotti; and the ludicrous (albeit underachieving) creative talent of recent times. More than any other nation, Argentina lives and breathes soccer, its theories and myths. The subject is fiercely debated on street corners and in cafes. It has even preoccupied the country's greatest writers and philosophers.ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is the definitive history of one of the worlds greatest soccer-playing nations and its paradoxes.