national audience L’ÉTÉ 1998 has been very sporting, one of these times when sport escapes its usual specialists to become a societal phenomenon or a societal problem calling for mobilisation. The events of the World Cup, from hooliganism to celebrations on 12 July, followed by the revelation of doping business and the offensive of major media groups on European clubs and competitions have of course put football at the centre of the debate. The most pressing question is perhaps the risk posed by the economic rationalisation of football to a culture characterised by fundamental uncertainty and by the logic of identity between a team, whether national or club, and a territory, all of which underpins the analyses of football historians, sociologists and anthropologists. The growing focus on sport, on the part of both researchers and journalists, may be accompanied by a call for regulation, which is very sensitive about doping, but equally crucial for example with regard to media coverage, where the question focuses on how best to maintain the balance between the recognition of sport as an economic activity and at the same time as a carrier, through sporting rules, of the values of democratic societies and the rules of living together.