What if football was never just about football?
Marloes Janson, Professor of West African Anthropology, SOAS University of London and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Muscular Faith: The Interplay between Sport and Religion in Africa (MFA)
For millions of people around the world, sport, and football in particular, is far more than a game. It occupies a space in public life as visible and influential as religion. The devotion, rituals, and collective identity that surround football mirror the social functions traditionally associated with religious practice.
Football does not merely resemble a religion; for many, it is a religion. The emotions it evokes echo the devotion found within religious communities. A striking example is the Iglesia Maradoniana, the Church of Maradona, founded by devotees of the late Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona.
This movement has developed its own commandments, prayers, and rituals, treating Maradona not simply as a sporting icon but as a sacred figure.
Forms of collective belief
That football inspires forms of collective belief, identity, and admiration that extend far beyond the boundaries of sport is especially evident in Africa, which has been known as the “sporting continent” since the 1965 African Games. According to the 2017 WIN/Gallup International Poll, Africa is also the world’s “most religious continent”.
For many Africans, sport and religion are the central pillars of social life.
Africa’s dual identity as both a sporting and a religious continent makes it a unique setting for examining the interplay between sport and religion.
Africa’s dual identity as both a sporting and a religious continent makes it a unique setting for examining the interplay between sport and religion.
The interplay between Sport and Religion
My European Research Council–funded project, Muscular Faith: The Interplay between Sport and Religion in Africa, investigates how sporting practices draw on religious traditions, and how religious communities, in turn, appropriate the language, values, and embodied practices of sport.
The project explores how these mutual borrowings shape meaning, identity, and purpose for individuals and communities across the continent.
The sport-religion interplay became particularly visible during the recent Ghana–England match at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Newspapers reported that a Ghanaian “spiritualist”, the same figure who had previously claimed responsibility for Ronaldo’s injury troubles during the 2014 tournament, had placed a “curse” on England’s striker, Harry Kane.
Football in Africa is not merely a matter of athletic performance; it is deeply entangled with ritual, faith, and spiritual protection.
Such accounts underscore that football in Africa is not merely a matter of athletic performance; it is deeply entangled with ritual, faith, and spiritual protection.
The 'modern deities'
Several scholars have described football players as “modern deities” and sports stadia as “present-day cathedrals”, underscoring the religious aura that surrounds sport. The behaviour of football fans often mirrors the devotion and ritualised practices associated with worship.
Both sport and religion engage the senses and the body.
Both sport and religion engage the senses and the body; they evoke powerful emotions, require ritualised gestures, and cultivate shared values such as discipline, self-sacrifice, endurance, and teamwork.
In this light, some scholars speak of the “religion of sport”, while others argue that sport has increasingly replaced religion as the arena in which questions of identity and belonging are negotiated. Together, these perspectives provide a compelling rationale for examining the multiple ways in which sport and religion intersect.
Practice what we study
Over the next five years, my research team and I will analyse and compare four ethnographic case studies: football in South Africa; boxing in Nigeria; long-distance running in Kenya; and karate in Egypt. Not only are we sports fanatics; we also practise the sports we study.
Rather than observing from the sidelines, we will train alongside athletes in order to grasp how sport and religion are lived and embodied in everyday life.
What we might understand differently if we stopped treating football as just a game?
Next time you watch the World Cup, or any sports match, pause and ask yourself what we might understand differently if we stopped treating football as just a game.
Because sport is never confined to the pitch: it unfolds in the crowd, in the prayers whispered before kick-off, in the hopes invested in every pass, and in the collective identities that nations forge through the drama of play.
Header image credit: Football fans (AdobeStock)
About the author
Professor Marloes Janson is Professor of West African Anthropology at SOAS University of London and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Muscular Faith: The Interplay between Sport and Religion in Africa.
