ABSTRACT
Soccer remains to be the most played and watched form of sport at the international level, and soccer games bring together millions of people. The beauty and the playfulness of the game and its appeal to the many from different social strata are both the source of greatness of this sport and yet also related to its social problems. None of these problems, in my view, are inherent to soccer itself, but soccer, just like any other sport, is a microcosm of the world in which it lives and reflects its problems. In this essay, I would like to explore the aesthetic and the ecstatic dimensions of soccer and show how the spirit of soccer is antithetical to the social phenomena listed above. Under the aesthetic dimension, I will approach soccer insofar as it is the field of playfulness, game-making, imagination and beauty. Under the ecstatic dimension, I will attempt to understand how soccer creates a community, an ecstatic communion, around a sporting event.
