Soccer is a team sport, practiced as a recreational physical activity by amateurs or professionally with elite players. This popular sport has several advantages such as integration of diverse styles and simple rules (Defrance, 1995). A psycho-sociological perspective is adopted in this article, exploring soccer as an object of social representation (Moscovici, 1961/76) with young, adult amateurs from a disadvantaged social background. The results obtained using the free association method and the characterization questionnaire show that there is a social representation of soccer. If, for young amateurs, this representation is based on the values of team sport, the one given to parents is rooted in the professional world. In addition, this study adds to an original phenomenon of the hidden” area of social representations. Between amateurism and professionalism, the reference to “Zinedine Zidane” adds to the controversial nature of this representation for young people
