Just a game?
Football was born as a game and it basically remains a game. But it is also a modern epic, with gods and goddesses, supporters and followers and legendary duels in which the young David can defeat the giant Goliath. Football reveals a lot about our culture: it is dance, competition, chance, deception, emotion, poetry and science.
Today, this cultural system is closely intertwined with other systems such as entertainment, communication, politics and the economy. The increasing commercialization of football, its dependence on the rules of television and marketing even gave rise to fears that competitions between national teams would be displaced in favour of competitions between clubs. But in an increasingly globalized world and in an increasingly global football, a World Cup is now a gigantic international event. Today, football is a worldwide social phenomenon, a mirror of the geopolitical role of the powers that be. Football is an instrument of soft power, a way of projecting values and ideologies to the outside world while at the same time mobilizing and uniting the masses within its own borders.
November 17, 2022 to August 27, 2023
