The beauty of the game

Poignant images decorate the walls of the Gallery of Photography, but Billy Leahy wishes Planet Football told the whole story

It's a funny old game, but if we believe the current exhibition of photographs at the Gallery of Photography, football is a lot more than an endless list of commentary clichés and certainly not just 22 grown-up men kicking a ball around a field.

Weltsprache Fußball - Planet Football, a showcase of 50 football images from across the globe, taken from the Magnum agency archives, aims to show the unifying nature of the sport in the face of social, gender, religious and political differences. The exhibition, although hosted by the Gallery of Photography in Ireland, is currently in the middle of a full world tour of 80 countries organised by the Goethe-Institut as its official contribution to the 2006 World Cup.

As you would expect from photographers such as Chris Steele-Perkins, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martin Parr and Luc Delahaye, the photographs on display are visually clever, sometimes unusual and perfectly composed. The scenes vary from mosque courtyards, middle-class English gardens and third world slums to urban Belfast and, of course, the football stadium.

Planet Football is, however, pretty much a jovial propaganda exhibition which focuses entirely on the positive side of football. And for a sport which too often suffers from bad press due to its manifold problems such as hooliganism, merchandising greed and scandalous off-field behaviour of players, it does provide a refreshing balance.

Poignant and arresting photographs dominate every wall, with some offering a striking aesthetic, such as Ferdinando Scianna's stunning 'Foosball' photograph, while others deal with stronger themes such as Philip Jones Griffiths' image of war-torn Grenada. Simple themes like the realisation of hopes and dreams through football can also be seen with the juxtaposition of a Mexican schoolboy football team in 1986, complete with unsullied new boots, beside a portrait of Maradona, fists clenched in victory, following Argentina's World Cup win in the same year.

Elsewhere, a Bolivian fan sits pensively in front of a poster of the national team, which mirrors the Last Supper image hanging next to it in the background. This subtle equating of the power of football with that of religion may be overstating the case, as might the positioning of football as an over-riding unifying element in society that can be enjoyed no matter what the circumstances.

In several photographs, the viewer must question whether the happiness of those playing football in a South American favela is a triumph of the human spirit, or whether it is a distraction or escape from serious social issues. Planet Football consistently expects us to go with the former, asking us to see football as a mirror of society's positive side.

Time and again we are confronted with images of supporters joyously celebrating together, but again we are asked to ignore the times football serves to heighten low-level nationalist fervour, dividing rather than uniting people. The brief 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras which was ignited by a football match between the two nations is a well documented example, while the terraces of Red Star Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb were (and continue to be on a smaller scale) hot-beds of extreme nationalism during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Planet Football steers away from these thorny issues, eschewing any possible partisan images or overt political bias. As a result it is a weaker exhibition – surely we are capable of facing the warts-and-all version and still leaving the exhibition with a positive view of football? These problems are not caused, after all, by football the sport, but are rather wider social issues that from time to time become augmented and are unfortunately given an outlet by the nature of the game.

But if we are to believe football is a way to view society and politics, we should be given the full view. Football, after all, is the people's game (two billion people watched Brazil beat Germany in the last World Cup final in 2002) and, as they say, at the end of the day it does possess far more positive features than negative ones.