The clásico must be won no matter what

Football is probably the most popular sport in the world, largely because it has become a product of the cultural industry that has become mediatised and globalised, making it possible to watch almost instantly any professional match in almost any league in the world. Although the sociology of sport is not a developed area of research, football is the most studied phenomenon in this field, largely due to its popularity. However, despite this, most research efforts lack methodological rigour and tend to deal almost exclusively with professional football, creating a gap in knowledge about other forms of football, whether as a children's game - "playing ball" - or as an amateur practice for thousands and thousands of people around the world. It is around this gap in scientific knowledge where this dissertation is situated, with the intention of contributing in a rigorous and creative way to the understanding of sport as a social phenomenon, making a case study of the classic amateur football of Chillán, Chile.