Zonal Marking: The Making of Modern European Football Audiobook (Free)

‘A wonderful overview of tactical development in European soccer’ Matthew Syed, The Times

‘A fascinating evaluation of football in 2019’ Observer

An insightful, extensive and always engaging appreciation of how Western european football has developed during the last three years by the author of the much heralded The Mixing machine.

Continental football has always cast a spell within the imagination. From the about Zonal Marking: The Producing of Modern Western european Soccer attacking flair of Real Madrid of the 50s to the defensive brilliance from the Italians in the 60s and onto the total football from the Dutch in the 70s, the Western european leagues have already been where the video game has most developed and used its biggest methods forward. And during the last three years, because the rebranding of the Champions League in 1992, that pattern has continuing unabated, with each major Western european footballing nation playing its part in how the game’s methods have developed.

In the intelligent use of space displayed from the phenomenal Ajax team of the first 90s, to the dominance of the highly strategic Italian little league in the later 90s and onto the technical wizardry of Barcelona’s tiki-taka, the European game continues to reinvent the tactical dimension of the game, creating blueprints which both club and national teams around the world make an effort to follow.

In Zonal Marking, Michael Cox brilliantly investigates and analyses the main leagues around Europe over specific schedules and demonstrates the impact each has made on how the game is now played. Highly entertaining and packed full of wonderful anecdotes, this is actually the first publication of its kind to take an overview of modern Western soccer, and lays uncovered the amount of the international vocabulary of football could be shaped by a nation’s unique identity.