Garrincha and Soccer: Semiotics of Dribbling Movement Situations

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the meanings of the movement situations of some of Garrincha's dribbles, as a practice of language originated from a notorious counterculture of the technical-tactical logic of soccer at the time. The research is descriptive, with a qualitative approach, of the documentary type, under the analysis of Pragmatic Semiotics of Corporeality Pedagogy. Were chosen three scenes from the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, the athlete's epic period, which gave world visibility to his dribbling. The results unveil Garrincha's dribbling as signs of a qualitative, peculiar and excessive spectacle, because there is a playful feature, which provokes an emotion without disguise in the use of the game space, the relations with opponents and the control of the ball with the right leg. It concludes that his dribbles offer a meaning in football movement situations, linked to joy and to the improvisation of flourishes and frills, as Garrincha represented a characteristic of Brazilian soccer culture generalized later in other players: a playful, singular and exaggerated style within the game.