Commemorating tragic heroes: statuary of soccer players who died mid-career

Statues of soccer players are a phenomenon as global as the sport itself, with 450 in situ at stadiums or civic sites around the world. A small subset of these statues have been motivated by the collective grief felt at an athletes’ life and career being cut short in its prime, a scenario as yet unexplored in the growing literature on sports sculpture and monuments. Using the authors’ unique database of the global soccer statuary to provide contextual comparisons, this paper focuses on two such statues, of Partizan Belgrade striker Dragan Mance and Sevilla FC defender Antonio Puerta. Together they illustrate how what are primarily sites of mourning and commemoration of a life lost can also reflect specific intersections between soccer, fanaticism and religion across different national and supporter cultures, engagements and tensions.