No "segundo tempo da vida": o jogador de futebol e a passagem para a pós-carreira

Abstract

I consider the modern sport, soccer particularly, as a social phenomenon with the greatest potential to examine many characteristics of modern times. Through soccer is possible to see the transience of modern life, frailty and at the same time, the strength of ties human – I mean relationships and linkages labor loyalties to groups and institutions, the (re) construction of representations of the nation (national identity), new processes of discipline, among others. From this context, that research focused on the "protagonist of the show" - the football player, especially when he makes the transition to the post-career, as I call here: the "second half of life". What kind of strategies and instruments the football players did use and what they still do on this transition? Why is it so hard to quit playing soccer professionally? To answer these and other questions surrounding this social phenomenon, I analyze from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory by making use of the concepts of "field" and "capital". I want to think about the process of "conversion" and "reconversion" of the many accumulated capitals along the trajectories and along the repositioning of field that took place in the passage of the condition of the player to former player. I raise the hypothesis that the football player’s career is formed as a "liminal condition" to explain the difficulties involved in this passage. I yet understand that the football player’s career is marked by a series of ambiguities as the position of the football player in the civilizing process (Elias, 1993). The research field was the state of Ceará. That research sought to answer the question of whether there is a labor market and a network of assistance to former football player in the state. The aim is understand the local reality, taking the trajectory of four former football players who played and still live in the state of Ceará as the main apparatus of this empirical research.