ABSTRACT
However enamored with the game one may be, there undeniably is silliness in the world of football (or soccer). But is it more stupid than other regions of social life? Through an Erasmian phenomenology of the sport, I provide a survey of stupidity in football, structured according to things said or done off and on the pitch, the sorts of knowledge that one can acquire of the sport, and the forms of madness or fanaticism it spawns. Against the foil of Erasmus’s goddess Folly and several concrete episodes from the recent history of the game, it emerges that stupidity in football is rarely far from revaluation into brilliance or insight, the same holding true vice versa. This is so despite the fact that football, which can only be played within its own field of play, removed from everyday concerns, is ever more concerned with managing its own image and business. Not unlike outbreaks of violence, such otherworldly concerns often break the spell that so captivates the attention of spectators the world over.
