Who am I if I am not a Footballer? 'Doing' Identity through the Sport Experience, an Anthropological Perspective

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when I started my degree I did not want to stop, I was keen to carry on; in the end I had rediscovered 
'the pleasure' for the game. I became a player for Goldsmith College 1st Team and found the rest of 
the team highly committed to the game.  
   To play for Goldsmiths College became almost the equivalent of playing for a city-town like I 
did in my country: the results of each match became more and more 'socially' important, beside it 
was interesting to see how players would take the pre-match build-up and post match conversation so 
seriously. These would cover all sorts of things, from the importance of the match coming up, who 
deserved or not to play, a wide range of after-match commentary – from underscoring someone’s 
excellent performance, shape, strength, to hilarious comments on someones’ mediocre performance, 
mistakes, awkwardness -  so-called 'taking the piss' ! 
  However, what particularly struck me were the connection I would make between my previous 
semi-professional career and the amateur one I was engaging with: the passion, excitement, 
fascination for the game was exactly the same, good skills and physical strength would be highly 
regarded whenever one had the opportunity to do it. What did football mean to all of us? What was 
so unique about 'the practice' of football? How could a game create such an adrenalitic rush?
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     1.2  The Argument  
     When I started reviewing the literature on football I noticed the recurring themes of 
hooliganism, crowed behaviour/psychology, community-fan culture, masculine identity, appearing to 
be the only 'issues' relating to this sport. Only recently has a new academic focus explored themes of 
nationalism, xenophobia, and racism stemming from the football scenario. By contrast very little 
seems to be examined in relation to the actual 'practice/doing' of this wide-spread sporting activity, 
its phenomenological status; in other words what is peculiar to this game that creates so many 
followers, and so much passion. Hence in this paper I intent to bring to light some 'hidden facts' that 
could enlarge our view of why football has become so popular throughout the world (beyond the fact 
that it is embedded in national and international socio-political, economic matters) coming to be 
defined as the ‘new’ opium of the masses.   
                                                 
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  One may argue that it is not only football that is so captivating and highly entertaining, therefore, in order to answer 
these questions the stance I take considers the ontological relevance of football, how football provides an ontological 
security for the practitioner, a ‘characteristic’ of any sport charged with highly emotional momentum.  In  other  words I 
intend to explore the game of football as representative of sport and/or team-sport in general, therefore by referring to 
football it is not my aim to make unique claims for it. I am aware that the sorts of analogies and associations one can 
make by looking at any form of sport that involves two teams and a crowd are manifold and might say much the same 
thing.