Esporte do oprimido: utopia e desencanto na formação do atleta de futebol

Abstract

This thesis addresses the development of a football player. The image of the wealth, glamour and status associated with top football player drive the dreams of many children and youth, mobilizing families and requiring personal sacrifices in order to make these dreams come true. However, it is perceived that the selection process of athletes for this football has suffered interference and spurious manipulations, causing much of the disenchantment of youth towards a football career. This thesis sought to investigate the relationships established in the selection, and extended to the training and professionalization of football players, analysing the problems that emerge and that, most of the times, cause the interruption of the candidates project and the career of already professionalized athletes. In this study, the structural axis of the research was the confrontation between the utopia of aspiring young football player and the career disenchantment due of his transformation into an exchange good in an informal market. Two categories developed by Paulo Freire were used to guide this study, especially the "relations of oppression" and "conscientization". Beyond the literature review, this thesis is also the result of a series of empirical data, collected from aspirants, parents, professional players, football training schools owners and soccer clubs staff. This thesis confirms that, however intense is the oppression involved in the formation of pro football player, and that he is the underdog in the established relationship, he can not be fully alienated by it, nor can it gag or even silence him. Instead, this research ratifies that the more oppressed he is, the more he exposes what happens.