Jonathan Wilson is the author of eight books, including Inverting the Pyramid, whichwas named NSC Football Book of the Year in 2009 and won the Premio Antonio Ghirelli prize as Italian soccer book of the year in 2013. His books Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football; The Anatomy of England; and The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper were shortlisted for the NSC award in 2007, 2011, and 2013. Wilson is the founder and editor of the soccer quarterly The Blizzard, writes for the Guardian,FoxSoccer, and Sports Illustrated, and is a columnist for World Soccer. He was voted Football Writer of the Year by the Football Supporters Federation in 2012.

"Before Johan Cruyff and Diego Maradona, modern soccer was shaped by legends like Gusztâav Sebes, Bâela Guttman, Mâarton Bukovi, Egri Ebstein, and Imre Herschel. In the 1920s and 1930s, they gathered with fellow players and coaches in the coffeehouses Budapest and invented soccer as we know it today. By the 1940s their culture was gone and these men and women, many of whom were Jewish, would be dead, interned, or in exile, their contributions to the beautiful game forgotten. In The Names Heard Long Ago, Jonathan Wilson invites readers into the pre-World War II era, when Hungary first established professional leagues. An unprecedented number of middle-class people in both countries took an interest in the sport. They were largely university educated, and they instinctively applied academic techniques and analysis to the game. The Names Heard Long Ago is as much about the individuals who cultivated the way the game is played as it is a tale of a way of life that was wiped out by fascism"--