This research proposes an analysis of the practice of football in urban Amazon(especially in the cities of Belém, Manaus and Porto Velho) and its relationship with the nacionalist discourse developed between the years 1930-1945. The objective of this study is to focus the football as a cultural practice that can symbolize and give new meaning to social relations in groups who practice them, and develop an analysis of this superstructural element, comprising the tensions and disagreements between groups and even between diferents country’s projects developed from discourses about football. Thus, analyzes two great historical moments in the semiotic construction of Brazil and about this ball game, symbolized between foot-ball and “futebol”, respectively the discourse of modernity and europeanization developed in the early decades of the twentieth century and the nationalist discourse developed from the 1930s, in order to consider the limits of both projects, especially regarding theAmazon reality. For that, focuses on the analysis of the construction and peculiarities to project of Brazil’s national integration (both in the political and cultural aspects) and how local social groups the cities of Belém, Manaus and Porto Velho found themselves in this scenario, joined and gave specific tonality for the “pátria de chuteiras”.
Key words: Football, Amazon and nacionalist discourse