Football and justice devices: hybrid ethical narratives,sanctions and legitimacy of interests

The concept of justice has gradually colonized sports’ narratives in general and professional football ones in particular. Discourses on justice often give rise to ambiguous, unclear narrations with a great deal of noise and opportunism. The aim of this article is to apply the concept of justice devices to clarify the range of measures used and link these to the diverse agents that attempt to gain legitimacy and power through them. In an initial characterisation, we highlight conventional and post-conventional models of ethics of justice. Subsequently, we compare these models to the systems of justice employed by football’s governing institutions, FIFA and UEFA. Finally, we analyse a paradigmatic event of judicial interpretation by various actors using the case of ‘Luiz Adriano’. In this article, we reveal some of the specific uses, settings and strategic aims of justice devices employed by the main actors involved in international football.