From Cruyff’s ‘Total Football’ to the epic rivalry between Guardiola and Mourinho, a gripping chronicle of the rise and fall of Barcelona’s dominance in world soccer.

Barcelona’s design of play–pressing and possessing–is the one biggest impact on modern soccer. In The Barcelona Inheritance, Jonathan Wilson reveals how and why this came to pass, supplying a deep evaluation of the development of soccer methods and style.

In the later 1990s, Johan Cruyff’s Wish Team was disintegrating and the revolutionary manager had departed, but his style gave birth to a new generation of thinkers, including Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho. Today, their groups are 1st and second in the Premier League, marking the latest installment in a rivalry that may be traced back again twenty-five years.

The Barcelona Inheritance is a book about the tactics, the personalities, the friendships, and, in one case, an apocalyptic falling-out that continue steadily to shape the overall game today.