Canadian university offering course to study Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo’s rise has reached such heights that he can now be studied in an exclusive course at a Canadian university.

College can be tough, especially with core classes, but what if you could enroll in a course dedicated entirely to Cristiano Ronaldo? The class would probably fill up instantly, with a lengthy wait list as well.

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However, students at The University of British Columbia Okanagan can exclusively study about the Real Madrid star as part of a fourth-year sociology module, due to his popularity and influence on global society.

It’s not the first time a player has been part of an educational module.

In 2000, David Beckham was also a subject of education when Straffordshire University offered a “David Beckham studies” course, looking at the sociological importance of soccer. It’s fair to say that Ronaldo may even have exceeded Beckham in popularity now.

Luis LM Aguiar, an associate professor of sociology in UBC Okanagan, will be combining two of his passions in football and sociology with this course.

“My two greatest passions are football and critical sociology. A course on Cristiano Ronaldo gives me the opportunity to combine the two,” Aguiar said. “While I’m an admirer of Ronaldo, I’m also a sociologist interested in understanding the social and economic forces driving the various constructions of this athlete and what this says about our contemporary values and culture.”

It won’t be all fun and games though, as there will be serious work involved in the semester-long course as students will examine the stereotypical image of Ronaldo among other things.

“Sociology is nothing if not the delving into the processes of structuring identities and experiences and exposing the social forces that push these processes,” Aguiar said. “In this case, I’m interested in how Ronaldo has been used to construct several discourses about who he is, what makes him distinct as a footballer, what is his relationship to Portugal, Madeira (his hometown) and indeed Portuguese identity.”

H/T: Goal

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