The role of informal, unstructured practice in developing football expertise: the case of Brazilian Pelada

The aim of this paper is to provide explanation and discussion on how unconventional socio-cultural constraints influence the development of skill and expertise of Brazilian football players. On this basis, the central question of this research is this: What are the influential environmental constraints on the development of perceptual-motor skills and expertise of Brazilian football players? The epistemological and methodological assumptions of the “contextualised skill acquisition research” (CSAR) (see Uehara et al., 2014) are used as an underpinning framework for data collection and organization of material. Drawing upon the notion of ethnographic strategies of inquiry for generating and analyzing data, we used qualitative methods such as contextual analysis, participant-observation, and open-ended interviews. At the micro-level of Brazilian society “pelada” emerges as one of the socio-cultural constraints that shapes the talent of Brazilian football players by influencing the development of their perceptual-motor expertise.