Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Oviedo

This article is part of an ethnographic study that aims to explore the power relations that are created between the different masculinities in the game of football, in a school located in Portugal. The data collected show that the social and cultural conceptions that exist around football serve to exclude girls from this sport and also children with less sports skills. However, we found that boys who were excluded from this sport did not always aspire to reach the dominant masculinity represented by the game of football. At the same time, boys who play football combined hegemonic behaviours of masculinity with behaviour proper to young children during the game. This article tries to confirm the existence of a model of "flexible masculinity" which serves as an analytical tool for future research on the construction of masculinities in young children.