It's a history of football tactics, but as Wilson shows, that isn't a subject divorced from a history of the society and culture football exists in. Tactical changes didn't come about in a vacuum, but we're driven by a range of forces that drove innovation. This is a good book, though possibly hampered by being targeted at a British audience, so there's a lot of plodding through stagnation away from the more interesting stories elsewhere. There's also a series of annoying little editing errors throughout that make it confusing at points and even introduce the hybrid player Ronaldo Koeman later on.