Amarelinha, Mineiraço, Lula and Bolsonaro

Football, Culture and Politics in 21st Century Brazil

Abstract

What does the incessant return of the Brazilian national team jersey between June 2013 and the government of Jair Bolsonaro mean? What is its role? What does football have to do with Brazil's public life in the early 21st century? Does its intervention in the recent political and social history of the country limit itself to the appearance of the national team jersey and its appropriation by extreme-right movements and parties? These are some of the questions that this article seeks to answer. To do so, the analysis mobilizes the theoretical-methodological framework of Greimas' discursive semiotics and Jurij Lotman's semiotics of culture, combining micro analyses of specific texts, practices, and discourses with macro analyses of broader and transversal sociocultural configurations, revealing the links between the semiospheres of football, politics, media, and religion.