This paper presents the process of non-professional players and clubs claiming urban spaces for the practice of "várzea football", an amateur football mode existing in different cities, including the state capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Through this case study we aim to show new facets of the Brazilian sports universe, according to the oral narrations by anonymous actors and their respective associative entities. Which were capable of proposing approaches to community dimensions that are uncommon when compared to the international image of the "country of football". This demonstration uses sources and methods based on Oral History and whose history of development in Brazil is contextualized in this article. With the same intent, this paper presents an overview of the introduction of football studies in the country from the 1970s, when the theme was not recognized in the academia, to contemporaneity, a period when research on the topic grows with significant qualitative and quantitative range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]