Aesthetic Imagination in Football

Abstract

In my previous texts on aesthetics of sport and of football, the accent was on dramatic aesthetic properties and on everyday aesthetics as a proper framework for the aesthetics of sport in general and football in particular. Here, following this starting point, the character of football as a game of social interactions (a feature pointed out by many sociologists) and its character of purposive sport are examined, to find out what could be the most important aesthetic condition for playing the game and being-in-the-game. To get at the core of the aesthetic side of football, the concept of aesthetic imagination is introduced as a necessary condition for playing the game of football, and three aesthetic regimes for creation of possible worlds or symbolic forms such as football are discussed (mimesis, representation and simulation). There are two steps where the aesthetic imagination helps. The first one is at the entrance where we are leaving ordinary everyday life behind, being ready to accept the world of football as an extraordinary possible universe. The other one is there to allow playing the game: incessant movement of two teams and their 22 members together with a ball creates a space in which one (be it an individual member or the team as a whole) cannot move according to rules and purpose of football without plugging in the aesthetic imagination which makes being-in-the-game possible.