When Sepp Blatter finished his X-Factor-style-long-pause-ending-envelope-opening routine to reveal Russia’s name as the host of the 2018 World Cup, it was with a cynicism borne of some experience that the world’s media began to unleash its vitriol.
And, while by no means suggesting it was revolutionary, there’s no doubt Jonathan Wilson’s Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football has played a significant part in shaping recent football journalism when covering the region.
First released in 2006, the travelogue covers the writer and journalist’s adventures in the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia among others.
What is pleasurable about this well-structured book is that it hits just the right spot between serious and silly. Wilson’s tales travelling behind the old Iron Curtain – often meeting cartoonish people or prising himself from a freezing press seat with a wallpaper scraper – are never mawkish and always pitched at the right level. “Perhaps it is a need to assert their values given the proximity of the Muslim world, perhaps it is simply that there isn’t much else to do, but Georgians have elevated drinking into a way of life, and while there, I lived their way,” he says of his time in Tbilisi, for example.
Wilson’s encounter with Dynamo Kiev’s former left-winger and manager Valeriy Lobanovskyi, seen as Ukraine’s answer to Brian Clough and known as The Colonel, proves a fascinating highlight, an insight into the tactician who truly saw himself as an artist and his players his vision. Ironic or explanatory now, given Wilson’s reputation as in-house tactical boffin at The Guardian.
Conversely, Wilson’s meeting with European Cup winner Dragiša Binić where the journalist tries to work out whether he is being ironic or an “insufferable egotist” reveals an irritating character. When the Yugoslav international, who won the European prize as part of Red Star Belgrade’s win over Marseille on penalties in Bari in 1991, compares himself to Carl Lewis as an athlete, you rather think the latter.
Of course there are bits on corruption, and it is perhaps those that ultimately led to some of the excellent pieces that followed Russia’s bid win. Wilson is honest, realistic and open about the state of the game in Eastern Europe and it seems unlikely there has been much change in the four years since publication. Few books will provide as rich a resource on the region’s football, politics, and footballing politics as well as providing an engaging narrative with plenty to take from it.
