Behind The Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football

Last updated : 17 May 2006 By Le_Master_Shake

By the author's own admission, Behind The Curtain, an insight into the beautiful game as played in the eastern bloc, is for the most part, “a tale of disappointment and decline.” This is not to say, however, that Jonathan Wilson's work makes for a dull and dreary read. On the contrary, the book provides a fascinating overview of football in the region, set against the backdrops of meddling Communist regimes, bloody struggles for independence and subsequent years of social upheaval.

Wilson's interest in eastern Europe was borne from summer holidays spent in the former Yugoslavia and cemented by his role as a journalist for the now defunct onefootball.com. “What had been an interest,” he informs us in his prologue, “became a passion, if only because it is far more stimulating to write pieces involving match-fixing, prostitutes and assassinations, than yet another transfer rumour concerning Mario Jardel.”

Such passion translates well to the 360 pages, though Wilson is hardly bereft of talking points. His research is meticulous – key matches are recounted in fine detail and given a greater sense of authority thanks to the input of a number of protagonists – and we are introduced to a number of local heroes, from Craiova to Yerevan, who would be virtually unknown to the majority of football enthusiasts in the west.

Behind the Curtain is divided into eight chapters and takes the reader on a journey through 13 countries. As far as the football is concerned, several negative themes are recurrent – allegations of widespread corruption, uncompetitive domestic leagues and plummeting attendances. But each chapter provides us with some unique insights, the best of which include the rise and fall of Hungary's Aranycsapat (Golden Squad) of the early to mid-1950s, the story behind Slovenia's surprise qualification for both Euro 2000 and the World Cup of 2002, and the role of Croatian and Serb football hooligans in the atrocities committed in the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s.

While the subject matter is for the most part deadly serious, Wilson manages to insert a modicum of comic relief, especially by chronicling possibly the crudest reaction ever to the abandoning of a match from Dinamo Bucharest defender Ioan Andone, and Walter Smith's alleged reaction upon completing a scouting mission of Red Star Belgrade in 1990. The more anecdotal dispatches must, naturally, be taken with a pinch of salt. The tale of a Partizan Belgrade manager who angrily threw a mug of coffee across a restaurant owing to the fact that it was served with a red spoon (red being the colour of Partizan's rivals, Red Star) was difficult for this particular Rangers fan to believe in light of stories concocted by our own press regarding Pepperami and Eggs Benedict…

That slight word of warning aside, Wilson is to be commended for delving so diligently into the history of a region largely ignored by British football writers. Behind the Curtain is an intelligent and well-written tome and certainly recommended to historians and fans of the beautiful game alike.

Le_Master_Shake