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One of the Rayo fans’ great slogans is that ‘nobody died if we never forget'

— Working Class Heroes by Robbie Dunne (Page 39)

So, for example, we knew that Zidane, Raúl and Figo didn’t track back, so we had to put a guy in front of the back four who would defend. But that’s reactionary football. It doesn’t multiply the players’ qualities exponentially. Which actually is the point of tactics: to achieve this multiplying effect on the players’ abilities.

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (85%)

Van Gaal himself replaced Bobby Robson at Barcelona, furthering the Total Football influence there, even if he and Johan Cruyff did constantly squabble like two Marxist theorists debating obscure doctrinal details.

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (78%)

‘Coaches,’ he said, ‘have come to view games as a succession of threats and thus fear has contaminated their ideas. Every imaginary threat they try to nullify leads them to a repressive decision which corrodes aspects of football such as happiness, freedom and creativity.

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (74%)

With the game so well analysed and understood, and defensive strategies so resolute, by the early nineties the great question facing football was whether beauty could be accommodated at all.

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (73%)

Set-plays were supposed to be his speciality, but he was so anxious about his side’s ability to defend them that, at 4 a.m. on the morning of the final, he burst into Ruggeri’s room, pounced on him, and, with the defender disoriented and half-asleep, asked who he was marking at corners. ‘Rummenigge,’ came the instant reply, which Bilardo took as evidence that Ruggeri was sufficiently focused.

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (73%)

Could it be that football follows a similar logic and that those brought up within a Protestant work ethic feel the need to be doing something at all times and so are more comfortable with the constant movement of pressing? That proactivity, that overt exertion, somehow feels more worthy or more natural than the reactivity of a libero and defending deep?

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (69%)

When Norway beat England 2–1 in qualifying for the 1982 World Cup, it was such a shock it sent the radio commentator Børge Lillelien into barely coherent delirium: ‘Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, vi har slått dem alle sammen, vi har slått dem alle sammen [we have beaten them all, we have beaten them all]. Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher […] your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!’

— Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (68%)