There are several studies that investigate the union between masculinity and football during primary education (Keddie, 2005; Paechter & Clark, 2007; Skelton, 1997). However, there is little research concerning the connection of playing football and hegemonic masculinity in younger children. In this sense, the investigation we present aims to explore how power relations are created and initiated with football, in a small group of students between three and five years of age in a Spanish school.It should be noted that in Spain football extends far beyond its sporting dimension.A recent study published by the Center for Sociological Research (2014) shows that 48% of respondents said they were interested in football despite not even practicing it. Likewise, 67.4% felt close or showed sympathy for a football team. This situation means that children observe this social phenomenon and incorporate the elements of this sport not only in their daily lives but also in school. Furthermore, in school, football plays a central role and children rely on this sport to build their masculinity based on elements such as strength, competitiveness, violence or sports skill.

Playing sports serves to separate those who do not demonstrate having the necessary resources within the playing field, resulting in a segregation of spaces (Epstein, Kehily, Mac AnGhaill& Redman, 2001; Karsten, 2003; Renold, 2004). In this sense, numerous studies (see for example Fagrell, Larsson &Redelius, 2012, Paechter, 2006, Renold, 1997) have indicated that girls are excluded from football and that when they join the activity, they usually take a marginal role. At the same time, the social-cultural conceptions that exist around football not only serve to exclude girls, but in turn provoke a hierarchy among different masculinities, depending on football skills (Hickey, 2008; Martino, 1999; Renold, 1997; Swain, 2000).

Taking into account this social context, and from a theoretical-methodological perspective, we will use Connell's (1995) theory of hegemonic masculinity as analysis tool, as long as it allows us to study the construction of plural masculinities in a specific school context, and the power struggle for the hegemonic perfectness through sports.The concept of hegemonic masculinity was initially formulated by Connell (1995) to theorize the pattern of practices that legitimizes the patriarchal system in society.Thus, in opposition to hegemonic masculinity, there are other marginalized and subordinated masculinities as well as femininities.With this, heterosexuality, sports prowess, violence or competitiveness are some of the central components in the regulation of masculinity, establishing the limits between those practices that are considered masculine and those that distance themselves from the dominant hegemonic model. Since its initial formulation, Connell's theory of masculinities has received various criticisms. Among these criticisms is their inability to theorize the dismantling of the gender order or the marginalization of women in its formulation (Talbot y Quayle; Hearn, 2004).

Bartholomaeus (2012) also pointed out, correctly, that Connell's theory does not contemplate the way in which children adopt hegemonic practices of masculinity. As the author points out, most of the research on the construction of masculinity within the school has adopted Connell's theory as an analytical tool; However, Connell does not include in his theory the way in which hegemonic masculinity can be adopted by young children. In this way, Connell's theory of masculinities requires an adjustment that allows its application in young children. In this sense, in our research, we propose a new model of masculinity, which has been called "flexible masculinity". This "flexible masculinity" is embodied by children who incorporate diverse elements in the construction of their masculinity, both hegemonic and non-hegemonic. (Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez, 2019)

The research adopts an ethnographic approach and for this a total of 300 hours of participant observation have been carried out in three schools located in the north of Spain, with boys and girls between three and five years of age. The main characteristic of the ethnographic method is that it allows to study a reality, in this case a school, participating people's daily life during a certain period of time (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1994). In this way, our goal is not to extrapolate the results to the entire population. Rather, our goal is to explore how young children negotiate masculinity in sport based on qualitative data from a specific local context. In this sense, we have paid special attention to the contradictions and ambivalence in the process of construction of gender identity. During the time the field work lasted, the researcher was introduced to the classroom as a participant observer, taking field notes. The data presented in this article include the results of the last visited school, which has been called ‘Rosario Acuña’ (both the name of the school and the names of the participants are fictitious). This school has been chosen because inside it construction of masculinity was very much linked to football. In addition, in the other two schools football was complicated because they did not have space to practice it. 60 hours of participant observation were developed, during the months of May and June 2017. In total, there were 40 students who were in preschool education (3-5 years) and primary education (6-12 years). The observations were made in a preschool classroom with 10 students. Specifically, there were two five-year-old students (Rosario and Simón), four four-year-old students (Asley, Alfonso, Tomás and Asier) and four three-year-old students (Jana, Carlos, Dani and Mateo).

The results of our study support previous research that has indicated that football plays an important role in schools, since it helps children who play football to reinforce their male position in front of the peer group (Martino, 1999; Renold, 1997; Swain, 2000). In this way, a double system of exclusion is being produced: on the one hand girls were excluded from the game of football and, on the other, the older children found strategies that allowed the exclusion of three-year-old children. Besides, among the children who played football we observed several versions of masculinity, depending on their sporting abilities.However, in our research we have also found that children were not always kept within a certain pattern of masculinity. In this sense, children who did not play reinforced their position through "football talks" in the classroom. At the same time, children who played football during recess time could also enjoy other games accompanied by girls in the classroom.In this way, football served to enjoy a privileged position within the classroom and allowed to move towards a "flexible masculinity" (Martínez-García and Rodríguez-Menéndez, 2019) which incorporated other not necessarily hegemonic elements. Most studies on the influence of sport in the construction of hegemonic masculinity have been developed with students in the primary and secondary stages, confirming that at these ages sport serves to reinforce male hegemony. However, our study has been carried out with students of five years of age and it is possible that the "flexible masculinity" to which we have referred could be determined by the age of the students. In this sense, a possible future research line may be to analyze the behavior of a group of students since their first years up to adolescence to see if male hegemony is consolidated when time passes.

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