ABSTRACT: The thesis investigates and analyses the state of knowledge of dissertations and thesis about football produced in Brazil and which are available at the CAPES thesis bank from 1987 to 2014.The literature review encompasses aspects related to the science and production of knowledge; interdisciplinarity and community of practice. The is a quali-quantitative, descriptive exploratory and theory-bibliographical study. The analysis of the data is divided into two processes: firstly, an analyses with bibliometric principles of the topics, areas of knowledge, universities, advisors, researchers , genre, level of qualification, year of defence and key words; in the second process, a quali-quantitative analysis of the 1258 abstracts of thesis and dissertations, investigating their aims, methods and results. The results state: there are no thesis or dissertations about the analysis of the production of knowledge of football in the CAPES thesis bank; growth of the scientific production about football; football is investigated by the 9 great areas and by the 84 areas of knowledge; concentration of studies in the Southeast and Southern regions; in the state of São Paulo; at USP and UNICAMP and, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul at UFRGS; 72.6% in public universities; 82% Masters Level; the highest frequency of studies is about football fan groups and the World Cup; and the predominant approach is 64% qualitative. The results indicate, yet, that 82% of the research is within the areas of Health Science, Humanities, Applied Social Science; in the fields of Physical Education, History, Communication, Administration, Sociology, Psychology, Education and Languages. In the summary of the research, Agricultural Sciences investigated supplementation and fields quality; in the Biological Sciences, anthropometric profile, energy output, biochemical and physiological parameters; in the Exact Sciences and Earth, probability in competitions, football matches tracking; in Engineering, stadiums structures, club management and game result prediction; in Multidisciplinar, fan clubs, historic and World Cup; in Linguistics, Languages and Arts, analysis of journalists articles, dictionaries and football speeches; in Health, training and injuries; in Applied Social Studies, clubs, marketing, employment agreement; in Humanities, identity, education, violence, religion and Indians; and in Physical Education, stress, the kick, women, physical aptitude and management of the base categories. In general analysis football has produced robust scientific knowledge, with certain disassociation of the scientific field, recurrence and fragmentation. The thesis proposes an interdisciplinary production of knowledge about football as a collective project, with an integration of areas, with new concepts, with dialogue, another vision of knowledge construction; through sharing via the practice communities, building relationships, with collective learning and engagement.
