ABSTRACT

In the twentieth century, sport, and especially soccer, was turned into a kind of universal modern language and was simultaneously transformed into a repository for constructing specificities (continental, national, regional, local). In the last two decades, this process has become a theme of reflection for anthropologists, sociologists and historians. In Brazil and Argentina, certain authors have been debating how, by using soccer, the nation is represented in its specificity, thus generating enough academic analyses to be able to compare certain results. The objective of this essay is to compare the construction of a national identity through soccer, in Brazil and in Argentina, by using some of these analyses. Certain interfaces will be explored, including, for example, the value attributed to individual players considered exceptionally talented, as well as certain peculiarities, such as distinct traditions invoked in constructing these individuals.