Professional football: football market and athletes freedom to voice their opinions towards the structure

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to understand the connection between the current structure of professional football in which athletes are submitted to work at a restricted field, and athletes' freedom to express their opinions facing such structure, that on one hand is responsible for validate their careers, and on the other hand is also responsible for that. Therefore, the text was structured to discuss the Modern Sport and the control that FIFA has done over professional football, the commodification of football players and the movement of Brazilian players abroad in order to find a job in the foreign market. Using a bibliographical research, athletes practices were analyzed taking into account two episodes involving the football players Neymar and Paulo Henrique Ganso, to understand some differences between their claims. The results show that, the practices of freedom in football consist of players action for reducing the status of "piece" or "good".