Jun 30, 2026 · 13 min · 10 segments
Culture, in the language of the Aboriginal researcher Tyson Yunkaporta's people, has no direct word. Instead, they use a phrase that roughly translates as "being like our place." That is the idea this…
Jani SarajärviHost
Let me start with something that sounds almost a little bit like mythological, but it's actually quite precise.
So in our book, we write about the aboriginal researcher Tyson Junkaparta, who once noted that in his native language, there is no word for culture.
Instead, there is a phrase which translates roughly... as the way of being so deeply inside something that you no longer notice it.
It's not only the traditions that we have, not only the language that we speak, not foods or songs or whatever.
And it happens when the world has grown so far into you that you cannot see where you end and the world begins.
And when you understand culture this way, as something living, breathing, you start to understand why football is so different in different places.
Also the training, it has become more similar because internet is, you know, allowing everybody to see how others train.
It's because of the humans are different and especially human environment correspondence is different.
Why do Brazilian players move the way they move? Why is there a chinga that's swaying, deceiving, elastically human quality to the body? It didn't come from a training program.
It came from the streets, from Pelada, from Malandrajein, the cultural wisdom that says you survive in this world by being more clever than the system that tries to contain you.
You find the small gaps, the unexpected angles, the movements that make the defenders think one thing while you do another.
And then you come to, say, Northern Europe, Finland or Estonia, and you ask, what is our football culture? What are our bodies expressing? Answer is complex.
Let me start with something that sounds almost a little bit like mythological, but it's actually quite precise.
So in our book, we write about the aboriginal researcher Tyson Junkaparta, who once noted that in his native language, there is no word for culture.
Instead, there is a phrase which translates roughly... as the way of being so deeply inside something that you no longer notice it.
It's not only the traditions that we have, not only the language that we speak, not foods or songs or whatever.
And it happens when the world has grown so far into you that you cannot see where you end and the world begins.
And when you understand culture this way, as something living, breathing, you start to understand why football is so different in different places.
Also the training, it has become more similar because internet is, you know, allowing everybody to see how others train.
It's because of the humans are different and especially human environment correspondence is different.
Why do Brazilian players move the way they move? Why is there a chinga that's swaying, deceiving, elastically human quality to the body? It didn't come from a training program.
It came from the streets, from Pelada, from Malandrajein, the cultural wisdom that says you survive in this world by being more clever than the system that tries to contain you.
You find the small gaps, the unexpected angles, the movements that make the defenders think one thing while you do another.
And then you come to, say, Northern Europe, Finland or Estonia, and you ask, what is our football culture? What are our bodies expressing? Answer is complex.
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