French football is an enigma: a puzzling jumble of brilliance and farce, flair and frailty, stunning success and abject failure. Its domestic league is mocked on social media as an uncompetitive 'Farmers League' and its clubs derided for underachieving in European competition. But France have reached four of the past seven men's World Cup finals, French players star week in, week out for the world's grandest clubs and the very best of French football – the roar of the Vélodrome, the glamour of the Parc des Princes, the shimmering brilliance of Zinédine Zidane, Éric Cantona and Kylian Mbappé – stands comparison with anything the sport has to offer. When it comes to scandal, meanwhile, the French are the best in the business, be it sensational match-fixing affairs, squabbles over sex tapes or meltdowns within the national squad. In this fascinating and exhaustively researched book, the first of its kind in the English language, Tom Williams brings to life French football's chequered coming of age over the last 40 years. He details how the starry-eyed romanticism that characterised the national team in the early 1980s gave way to an Italian-style pragmatism that would lead to the summit of the international game in the late 1990s and examines how a succession of star-studded club sides grappled with the thorny (and distinctly un-French) notion of how to win. He delves into French football's rich history and explains the myriad ways – tactical, technical and cultural – in which France has shaped the game's evolution around the world. Featuring exclusive interviews with great figures of the French game such as Alain Giresse, Jean-Pierre Papin, Luis Fernandez, Guy Roux, Emmanuel Petit, Robert Pirès, Blaise Matuidi and Camille Abily, and with a cast of characters that also includes Michel Platini, Thierry Henry, Arsène Wenger, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Karim Benzema, Chris Waddle, Neymar Jr and Lionel Messi, it's a book no football fan will want to miss.