Antioquia's Regional Narratives and the Challenges of Professional Football in Medellín during the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

This article examines the challenges sportswriters and footballers faced in Antioquia (Colombia) during the 1950s and 1960s when trying to make of professional football a legitimate job and spectacle. Because in Colombia neither the nation‐state nor collective actors participated directly in professional football and the tournament involved teams from several regions, the history of these challenges illuminates the varying political and cultural conditions under which professional football developed, reveals footballers' agency to promote the sport, and demonstrates that professional football became a field in which different actors contested and forged regional narratives.