„Świat nie jest piłką futbolową...”?! Antropologia futbolu
“The World is Not a Football…”?!

Summary/Abstract: The Anthropology of Football The text envisaged as a sui generis introduction to this issue begins with a phrase from Antoni Słonimski’s poem: Kontrmarsz, written in 1923 in response to Vladimir Mayakovski’s Left march! (1919) and in contrast to the incorrect perception of football as a synonym of primitiveness, indicating the intellectual dimension of the game and its force as a cultural phenomenon deserving the closer attention of the anthropologist of culture. In reference to texts amassed in the issue (by such authors as Stomma, Bredekamp, Czaja, Szerszeń et al.) and the complex image of football encountered in Heinrich Böll’s The Clown emphasis has been placed on its almost religious (quasi-religious) character, demonstrating the startling conquest of the world by football as well as the presence of “thinking in football categories” in contemporary language, politics and culture. Present-day football is not only the Great World. It is Galactic and Global, a supra-national and international oecumenic community, a world with a language of its own. While characterising football – that ”beutiful game” – as “volatile thought” the author described it as a “dynamic community of thought and comprehension”. In a discussion of the documentaries: Pelada (USA, 2011), Blind Ambition (UK, 2010) and My Mate Manchester United (Bulgaria, 2011) shown as part of a film review accompanying the festival of football culture in Warsaw at the time of the latest European Football Championship (Euro 2012) the author justified football as a Space of the Imagination, Freedom, Dialogue and Meeting.

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