Twenty two players in search of an author: the unpredictable and the narrative grammar

Abstract

The analysis of a football match may pose many questions to semiotics, but most central of all seems to be what revolves around the role of fortuity. Can we hope for the victory of a supposedly disadvantaged team, as deplored by an economic journalist ? Can we take pleasure in a show whose issue can be decided by minor, almost negligible events ? More generally, how to evaluate the role of randomness and the play of multiple possibilities in the definition of narrative structures ? Do we need to rethink, in some respects, the relationship between the real and the possible ? The issue, in the end, seems much less futile and circumscribed than we might think.