Additional thanks are due to Rob Smyth for his obsession with the Denmark team of the eighties and his generosity in sharing his analysis of them.

Thanks to Richard McBrearty of the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden and Peter Horne at the National Football Museum in Preston for sharing their expertise in the origins of soccer, and to the staff of the British Library at St. Pancras, the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, and the British Newspaper Library at Colindale. This episode’s installment in the Coach Beard Book Club: Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics, a 2008 book by prolific sports writer Jonathan Wilson. What’s interesting in reading this book is just how much tactics have evolved since the start of the 20th century.As it turned out, Murakami didn't even make the shortlist, which, the week after he'd been overlooked for the Nobel, must have come as a terrible double blow for the Japanese ace. Looking at it selfishly, I wish he had won the Nobel, because then I could have claimed to have beaten a Nobel-prize winner. Even better, it would have been in his The method above is a typical process of doing research and coming to a conclusion in business writing. When we want to effectively present the information, we turn around the process by inverting the pyramid. Fourteen years later the southern version of the game took another step towards uniformity as J. C. Thring—the younger brother of Edward, the Uppingham headmaster—having been thwarted in an earlier attempt to draw up a set of unified rules at Cambridge, brought out a set of ten laws entitled “The Simplest Game.” The following October, another variant, the “Cambridge University Football Rules,” was published. Crucially, a month later, the Football Association was formed, and it immediately set about trying to determine a definitive set of laws of the game, intending still to combine the best elements of both the dribbling and the handling game. It’s easy to think football is a game of 11v11 and two halves, but there is a lot more to it than that. Success is often determined by the tactics teams use. Izadi, Elahi (14 April 2015). "How newspapers covered Abraham Lincoln's assassination 150 years ago". Washington Post Style Blog . Retrieved 14 April 2015.

Manchester United captain Rio Ferdinand, evaluating on his team’s sound defeat at the hands of FC Barcelona in the 2010 Champions League Final, exclaimed that Barça had played without a forward, thus making life difficult for the Manchester defense.

Where those revolutions take them will have to wait, however. Like the Greyhounds, we’re heading into the offseason. But a final question: Where will a third season take Ted? He loves being the Greyounds’s coach but, two years in, he remains a bit rootless. He misses his son, if not Kansas itself (though it might be nice to return to a place where no one asked you to clarify if you wanted “still” water). At the end of the match, a Greyhounds announcer notes that the team still hasn’t won a major championship, which sounds like the show setting up what comes next. But at what point will Ted have accomplished all he needs to accomplish? Or will that day come? Is this the story of an American finding a new home or taking a sojourn? We’ll find out, but not soon. Nowadays, the inverse seems to be true. We are much more enamoured with players who are technical, and skilful than we are by displays of blood and thunder. There is a lot of detail and if you’re unfamiliar with the teams and tactics which are talked about it may be hard to follow. That said, if you have a passing interest in football, or you’re not that bothered about the tactical aspect of it, this book may be a difficult read. Scanlan, Chip (2003-06-23). "An examination of the inverted pyramid". Poynter Institute . Retrieved 2006-07-04.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but tactics in football are constantly changing and evolving. In my lifetime, football has changed significantly. Emde, Katharina; Klimmt, Christoph; Schluetz, Daniela M. (3 July 2016). "Does Storytelling help Adolescents to Process the News?: A comparison of narrative news and the inverted pyramid". Journalism Studies. 17 (5): 608–627. doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1006900. S2CID 142660416.Then, probably hardest of all, there's the business of writing this piece (which, yes, is milking even more cash from the shortlisting, but I wish I'd given it more thought before I agreed to do it). It's not just the hangover; it's just not easy to write about yourself, especially when you're trying to be gracious, without sounding like the kind of person I'd usually want to punch in the face. The dominant tactic of the early days was the 2-3-5 formation, known as the pyramid, a reference to the title of the book. Inverting the Pyramid of Success" is the twelfth episode and season finale of the second season of the American sports comedy-drama television series Ted Lasso, based on the character played by Jason Sudeikis in a series of promos for NBC Sports' coverage of England's Premier League. It is the 22nd overall episode of the series and was written by main cast member Jason Sudeikis and executive producer Joe Kelly and directed by supervising producer Declan Lowney. It was released on Apple TV+ on October 8, 2021. Thanks to my agent, David Luxton, and my editor at Orion, Ian Preece, for their unflagging support and helpful interventions, and to the copyeditor, Chris Hawkes, for his diligence.