Neymar and the symbolic economy of football

Once you get past the eye-watering numbers involved, I think the Neymar transfer is a fascinating story on a number of fronts. Most of these are related to arguments that Neymar is either taking a step back (from the insurmountable heights of Barcelona) or dropping down a league (La Liga to Ligue 1) or that he is simply not worth a net outlay of £400m. I’m not disputing much of this, but I do think there is an interesting symbolic dimension to this which I’ve been trying to write about more generally for the past year. So here’s my thoughts (in all their Bourdieusian glory)…

This transfer is being fought on a number of “playing fields” — both on the football pitch, as well as the geo-political dimension as Simon Chadwick’s recent blog illustrates. I do think that a great deal of this can be explained in terms of a symbolic economy rather than the economic clout of both club and country. If spending £400m on one player isn’t enough of a demonstration, money does not matter — either for the club, the country (Qatar) or the player.

What is at stake is “symbolic capital” — legitimacy, rather than financial clout. In each field a specific logic governs how individuals (and organisations) can accrue symbolic capital. In artistic fields for instance, legitimacy is generally opposed to money — Kings of Leon go from “credible” indie band to stadium fillers, the fans that carried them that far then tend to regard them as “selling out”. The symbolic capital accrued in football is different, and while it can be won in ways without money, symbolic capital can increasingly be tied to economic capital within football clubs.

Symbolic capital can indeed be won and lost on the football pitch. While teams ultimately are attempting to simply win football matches, teams can convert 11 sources of cultural capital (the embodied skills and capacities of footballers) into symbolic capital. can be done through playing the right way (Tiki-taka, attacking football), the romantic stories (Leicester, Roy of the Rovers-style stories), etc. This much is clear based on the reverence that Guardiola enjoys and the revulsion that Sam Allardyce can attract based on how their teams conduct their football.

For PSG, the massive outlay in transfer fees is to attain legitimacy — a transfer of large amounts of economic capital (to purchase forms of embodied cultural capital) in the hope of attaining symbolic capital. Having a player that has large amounts of acclaimed embodied cultural capital can add to a sense of legitimacy to the club. Even the transfer fee, or even the transfer record, can give sense to this being a ‘big club’. The ultimate aim is of course to win the biggest prize in club football, the Champions League, which allows the club to say they are one of the select clubs to win the trophy.

While a lot of people say that Neymar is dropping down a club (Barcelona, tika-taka, more than a club… symbolic capital par excellence), this strategy has been successful for a number of clubs — Manchester City are now seen as a legitimate big club attracting revered managers, Chelsea before them have a Champions League, with both clubs now unquestioned “Top 4” clubs in England rather than viewed as noveau riche. Ultimately, as a Brazilian with designs on winning a Ballon D’Or via a World Cup, the league does not matter at all — league football is increasingly a means to an end: accessing the Champions League (the Top 4 trophy) and getting goal tallies up. La Liga and Ligue 1 are ultimately quite similar in the disproportionate distribution of talent and money at the top. The only reason they are viewed differently is via the co-efficients of European performance. Yet, PSG are already quite comfortably a top 8 team in Europe simply based on their recent Champions League finishes. Indeed, if anything for Neymar a less daunting league (which PSG ultimately have to win back) might help in his quest to be in peak condition for the World Cup.

While it may seem like this is a strategy to win money in the long run — Symbolic capital is of course convertible into economic capital — perhaps the more desirable element of pursuing symbolic capital is its ability to disguise: if you can appear to do the right things, you can avoid the negative sanctions of the symbolic economy when doing questionable things. Barcelona’s economic links to Qatar — the first sponsor on their famously unsponsored shirts — have not ultimately do any harm to their romantic image. Indeed, the Qatari links to Barcelona predate PSG’s, yet this is not really played up in the media storm over Neymar. Qatar’s involvement in this is perhaps to conjure up some symbolic capital to add some legitimacy to their World Cup, as well as their current trade battles, despite the attention drawn to their horrendous labour practices in building the World Cup. The use of sport as a way of whitewashing — or “sportswashing” — a country’s image has been quite evident over the past decade, particularly in F1. The use however of a single player to achieve this is arguably quite new.

It is of course a little more complicated than this quick, broad brush description; but this is my thinking on the Neymar transfer. We will see how it all works out, but as has been said, this is a transfer that is working on several different levels — but there is definitely an urgent non-economic battle being waged.