Cultura de per si do futebol

Abstract

The essay tradition dealing with football, at least in Brazil, has almost always given foremost importance to the sociological matrix, in which it has grounded its arguments. In this article, differently from the tradition, we propose an approach inherent to the practices and characteristics of the most popular sport on the planet, here identified by the expression“per se”. In order to understand football from the viewpoint of its own nature, to serve as our reference we made an extensive use of the testimonials of great players from the history of Brazilian football featured in the book Recados da Bola – Depoimentos de Doze Mestres do Futebol Brasileiro [Ball Messages – Testimonals of Twelve Brazilian Football Masters], and also of excerpts of articles and chronicles by Décio de Almeida Prado, Mario Filho and Nelson Rodrigues. Among all testimonials making up Recados da Bola, the one we used the most was the one by Valdir Pereira, known as Didi, cerebral genius who, according to the journalist Sérgio Augusto (2004), “looked like a figure painted by Modigliani, a black swan full of artfulness and tricks”.