These five free-to-read stories look beyond the spectacle to examine football’s wider architectural world

This Sunday, millions of people will gather around screens to watch the World Cup final, collapsing vast distances into a single televised event. Yet the game is never confined to the pitch. It shapes cities, occupies public space, drives investment and displacement, creates rituals of collective belonging and mediates our relationship with place through broadcast technologies.

Architecture has long been implicated in football’s cultural and political life. Behind every tournament lies a more complicated story: of infrastructure and inequality, regeneration and speculation, colonial histories, media networks and contested ideas of public space.

Curated from the AR archive, these five free-to-read stories look beyond the spectacle to examine football’s wider architectural world. From Brazil’s floodplain pitches and Nigeria’s televised viewing centres to South Africa’s World Cup legacy and Medellín’s civic sports halls, they ask what football leaves behind once the final whistle blows – and what architecture can reveal about one of the world’s most powerful cultural forces.

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The football will be televised, AR June 2024, Victor Onyebueke
‘An important match ostensibly transforms the entire world into a colossal figurative stadium’

Brazil’s floodplain fields, AR June 2024, Guilherme Wisnik
‘ Football fields are true – and practically their only – public spaces, used by the community not only for football matches, but also for assemblies and parties’

South Africa – Will the World Cup bring economic change?, AR June 2010, Catherine Slessor
‘When the soccer circus leaves town, this elusive sense of civic connection and renewal will be the enduring test as to whether it was all worth it’

Four Sports Halls by Giancarlo Mazzanti and Felipe Mesa, Plan:B, Medellín, Colombia, AR February 2011, Michael Webb
‘Their fretted metal sides allow everyone to glimpse a game for free, blurring the boundary between spectacle and circulation’

Typology: Stadium, AR May 2021, Tom Wilkinson
‘The stadium is caught somewhere between spectacle and social condenser: this is its potential and its tragedy’

Lead image: In Brazil’s densely built favelas, football fields also host everyday gatherings and collective festivities. As traces in the ground reveal, these residents regularly use the field as a shortcut. Credit: Leonardo Finotti