Football, technology and learning

The research highlights the history of football from ancient to modern cultures, and its transformation into a spectacle that arouses emotions and moves crowds in different contexts and places around the world, especially in Brazilian culture. Looking at the panorama of the forms that the preparation of football athletes takes in this context, based on the impact of scientific thinking and technology on the performance of professional football athletes, the work draws on the directions offered by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology to propose a way of understanding how corporeality translates into the abilities of a body to find creative solutions in the midst of situations of high cognitive complexity required in football. It also takes into account the role of electronic games that simulate football matches and how these games have redefined training in this sport, seeking to establish a relationship between learning football, the stages of child development, playfulness and performance, which favours overcoming the barriers of representation in favour of creative ability.