Neils N. Rossing and Lotte S. Skrubbeltrang
The Big Idea
Just over 50 years ago Marshal McCluhan published a book entitled Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Its shorthand mantra was “the medium is the message.” His message has been interpreted and misinterpreted over the years. But in general McCluhan was just pointing out that with any invention or new idea or cultural artifact, there is the ground and the figure. The ground is what is obvious (the product); the figure is not-so-obvious (the message).
In the sport of football, so it is that there is the seen and the unseen. In this paper the authors explore the ramifications of understanding football as a universal language, complete with national dialects. Their stance is to describe football as a system with specific and standard rules of the game internationally understood. They argue that the users of this language include the players, coaches, spectators, and media. These users share social institutions that reflect particular national cultures as evidenced, for example, as a team’s style of play.
Based on documents and video analysis, the researchers conducted a cultural analysis of two World Cup teams: Italy and Brazil in their 2010 and 2014 appearances. Using documents on the nature of their national cultures and video coding of Italian (six matches) and Brazilian matches (12 matches), they made comparisons between and within the national teams. They were looking for the ways the teams either reflected their national cultures in their play, or showed difference from those cultures.
They were able to demonstrate that each national team largely maintained what they called a unique national dialect of the football language. But they also found some incoherence between the national teams and the Brazilian and Italian football culture in general.
Takeaways
- There is little question that football (soccer) is major cultural phenomenon.
- Like music, football is also language.
- Players, coaches, spectators, and the media all identify with their particular national team.
- In language, there are dialects. So it also means that particular differences between national teams could be said to be a dialect.
- This study compares the 2010 and 2014 appearances of Italy and Brazil. The analysis included both the literature related to describing the national cultures themselves, and watching video of the ways in which the World Cup styles of play were consistent or not with the national cultures.
- The upshot of the study is that for the most part, both teams were stable with regard to expressing the uniqueness of their cultures’ espoused values and basic assumptions.
- But they also reported that there were some inherent inconsistences between the national teams and the Brazilian and Italian football culture in general.
- The significance of this last finding points to an interesting situation with regard to the migration of players to other than their home countries, and the question of the potential future homogenization of the sport itself—in other words, the future possibility of playing a language without dialects.
The Research
In a sense, this research paper is a distant echo of McCluhan’s argument. There is football (soccer)—the ground; and there is its functional communication system, its language—the figure. In other words, football is, besides being what we see, also what is said by way of seeing it. These researchers were curious about the extent to which the human bodies in football are simultaneously the body of football (the ground and the figure). Hence football becomes a universal language well worth studying.
Taking their start with the style and meaning of two national football teams, Italy and Brazil, the researchers explore how actions on the field relate to differing national understandings of football. These differences are they call dialects. They are pursuing the relative consistency of these dialects in what has become a globalised world; and especially they are interested in the impact of player migration between countries (since the 1995 Bosman ruling) on that consistency.
This study proceeded by way of both document study and coded video analysis. The document study included scientific articles and popular books on football cultures and playing styles. The video analysis used the 2010 and 2014 World Cup play of Italy and Brazil. The combination of methods focused on three levels of culture (Schein 1990): artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions. In football, the player actions are the artifacts, which in turn become the concrete symbols in motion, which are embedded in the espoused values and basic assumptions.
Italy in the World Cups
- Basic cultural assumptions
- Football is played with rationalism
- A winning team is a good defensive team
- A winning team wins by any means necessary
- Football is about winning
- Most important is the result of the game
- Collectivism is a dogma to proceed to win
- Espoused value is essentially a defensive playing style and player state of mind: “Our first priority is a clean slate.”
- Artifacts between 2010 and 2014 subtle shifting of:
- Ball play from ground to ground and air
- Tempo from slow to changing up
- Player movement from towards goal to sideways
- Playing areas from large to small/middle sized
- Communication with opponents from hard to softer
Brazil in the World Cups
- Basic cultural assumptions
- Football is played with aesthetics
- A winning team is a good offensive team
- Football is about displaying skills
- Most important is the beauty of the game
- A team is characterized by winning qualities
- Espoused value is: “the best defense is a good offense”
- Artifacts between 2010 and 2014 both cohere and shift
- Playing beautifully was not coherent with artifact of tougher play
- Collective rhythm shifts to more individualistic
- Player communication with opponents from medium to hard
- Tempo from changing to mostly fast
- Player movement from sideways/toward goal to mostly toward goal
All in all, there were three findings from this cultural analysis of these two cultural teams and football cultures.
First, there were definitely changes in both national teams between their 2010 and 2014 World Cup appearances. But the changes were moderate. The researchers believe they have established that playing styles can indeed be understood as dialects within the language of football. In this sense, a nation’s identity is reflected relatively well in an international tournament setting.
Second, these dialects do not appear to be exact cultural blueprints of a nation. There is a certain amount of artifact dynamism displayed within the espoused values and basic assumptions of these two cultures. Even more, at least in the case of Brazil, there was incoherence between the artifacts and the values/assumptions between World Cup appearances. The conclusion was that both teams were exhibiting a cultural adaptation between these two World Cup appearances. One explanation of the appearance of incoherence was that both teams changed national coaches.
Third, it is difficult to find a definite conclusion about the impact of the migration of football players between countries. Brazil’s flip from European style back to Brazilian style between 2010 and 2014 suggests a return to more national stability. Even with the influx of international players, both teams have largely remained faithful to their own dialect.
The researchers conclude that in spite of the globalisation and migration trends in football since 1995, there largely remains enough national stability that we can still identify different playing styles as national dialects within the language of football. They caution, however, that there were enough cultural inconsistencies within these two clubs to suggest the possible evolution of football clubs from representing a particular national team, to such clubs representing a homogenised national football culture instead.
If we speculate about the meaning of this last finding, there are two obvious takeaways. Either we maybe regretfully lose our national identities (dialects) currently reflected in football; or perhaps we happily gain a leg up on learning a universal language of football without dialect, but with unlimited global unifying possibilities.
