Behind the goal: Exploring the football (soccer) goal net through object biography and creative non-fiction

Abstract

Football (soccer) and its extended culture have been studied extensively. In contrast, the goal net, an essential part of the game’s equipment, has undergone very little scrutiny in academic research or creative non-fiction. The goal net consists of a nylon net drawn across a rectangular frame, often supported by angled stanchions. Positioned at parallel ends of a rectangular football pitch, they provide the target for opposing teams in the course of a match. During play, the goal net is regularly transformed from perfunctory piece of sporting equipment into artefact, imbued with narrative and aesthetic meaning. Creative non-fiction is a long-established critical approach and means of exploration of football, its play, its participants, traditions, and stories (see Wilson, 2013; Winner, 2012[2000]; Goldblatt, 2006; Bellos, 2002; and Hornby, 1992). The theory and concepts of object biography posit that objects must be examined as if they, like humans, have or have had a life story (Kopytoff, 1986; see also Brown, 2000; Gosden & Marshall, 1999). Creative non-fiction related to football rarely examines the life stories of those objects employed in the game. This paper employs textual and contextual analyses (See Belsey, 2011; McKee, 2003), theoretical frameworks offered by object biography, and a famous goal in the Népstadion, Hungary, from 1981, to examine the oft-neglected goal net’s dramatic influence on the visual narrative of a key element of football: a goal scored.