Game-body, body of the game: football and masculinity

Abstract

The object of this text are football
practices as contexts in which gender identity is
learned. Developed based on an ethnographic fo-
ray into the football routine of youths in a neigh-
borhood of Belo Horizonte, this article discloses
important issues (in the learning process) involving
the formation of masculinity and the gender rela-
tions at stake in this sport. Thus, it reveals that the
learning of football is widespread in the different
ways of participating in social practice and invol-
ves more than techniques, tactics and rules. In daily
football practices, young athletes learn football and
also build identities. It is not, however, a process of
passive assimilation in which the body is gradually
molded. On the contrary, the culture of football
marks the body of its players just as it is marked
by them.