Three sided football
Encyclopedia
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
with three teams instead of the usual two. It was devised by the Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
Situationist Asger Jorn
Asger Jorn
Asger Oluf Jorn was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International...
to explain his notion of triolectics, his refinement on the Marxian
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
concept of dialectics, as well as to disrupt one's everyday idea of football. Played on a hexagonal pitch http://aaa.t0.or.at/images/feld.jpg, the game can be adapted for similarity to soccer
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
as well as other versions of football.
Unlike in conventional football, where the winner is determined by the highest scoring of the two teams, no score is kept of the goals which a team scores, but conversely a count is taken of the number of goals conceded and the winning team is that which concedes the least number of goals. The game purports to deconstruct the confrontational and bi-polar nature of conventional football as an analogy of class struggle in which the referee stands as a signifier of the state and media apparatus, posturing as a neutral arbitrator in the political process of ongoing class struggle.
History
It has been promoted in England, ScotlandScotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
by the Luther Blissett Three-sided Football League. The first known game played was organized by the London Psychogeographical Association
London Psychogeographical Association
The London Psychogeographical Association is an organisation devoted to psychogeography. The LPA is perhaps best understood in the context of psychogeographical praxis.-London Psychogeographical Institute:...
at the Glasgow Anarchist Summer School in 1993. Participants included Richard Essex, Stewart Home
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
and the members of The Workshop for Non-Linear Architecture.
In August 2009 a Three sided football game was played in Alytaus as part of the Art Strike
Art strike
First known reference to art strike is in Alain Jouffroy's essay "What's To Be Done About Art?" :...
events there. Stewart Home acted as referee.
On 31 October 2009, a three sided football competition was organised in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
during the Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon. The subversive event was a confrontation of the non spectacular sense of the original game with the main title of the Biennale, Le Spectacle du Quoditidien. The manifestation took place in Stade Laurent Gérin, Vénissieux
Vénissieux
Vénissieux is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France. It is the second-largest suburb of the city of Lyon, and is adjacent to the southeast.-Transport:...
and was organised by Pied La Biche association.
A three sided football game, with each team representing one of the main political parties, was played on 2 May 2010 in Haggerston Park
Haggerston Park
Haggerston Park is an open space in Haggerston, in the London Borough of Hackney. It is bounded by Whiston Road , Hackney Road and St Saviour's Priory, Queensbridge Road and Goldsmith's Row ....
, London in the run-up to the UK General Election. This match was organised by Whitechapel Gallery in conjunction with Philosophy Football FC. The match was won by Philosophy Football FC
Philosophy Football FC
Philosophy Football FC is an amateur football club based in London, UK. It has a history of political engagement and activism in the UK and Europe. The club has played since 1995 in a number of London amateur leagues...
, representing Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, who conceded no goals to the Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
' 2 and Lib Dems
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
' 3. The team also organised and competed in the first ever three-sided football match to be played in Spain, on 7 May 2011, and discussed by journalist Sid Lowe
Sid Lowe
Simon Lowe, better known as Sid Lowe, is a Madrid-based British columnist who has been covering Spanish football for The Guardian newspaper and Guardian Unlimited website since 2001...
in the Guardians football podcast. Lowe's team won 3-5-5.
In an event called "Thinking Football", aiming to reflect on the role of football in modern society, the Athletic de Bilbao Foundation organised among other things a three sided football championship taking place from october 2011 to april 2012 with 37 participant teams.
See also
- Three-player chess
- Sannin shogiSannin shogiSannin shōgi , or in full kokusai sannin shōgi , is a three-person shogi variant invented circa 1930 by Tanigasaki Jisuke and recently revived. It is played on a hexagonal grid of border length 7 with 127 cells. Standard shogi pieces may be used, and the rules for capture, promotion, drops, etc...
, a three-handed shogi variant played on a hexagonal board