Does Qualifying Really Qualify? Comparing the Representations of Euro 2008 and Euro 2012 in the Turkish Media

Abstract

If there is one thing that academia has learnt from football, it is that football indeed emerged as a significant marker of identity. As the chapter by Szogs in this volume convincingly demonstrates, football, due to its fundamental design of binary oppositions, continuously invites the spectator — even if his/her ‘own’ team is not involved — to take sides and express partisanship. Contrary to conventional wisdom, football does not ‘reflect society’. As Sonntag argues, ‘what football or rather the collective behaviour patterns football makes visible, can actually reflect is not so much society as such, but collectively shared, mostly unconscious desires and fears which move the individuals that make up society’ (Sonntag, 2008, p. 266). Moreover, it provides a wonderful opportunity for delving into the questions of Self and Other, representation, belonging, exclusion, trans-regional and transnational identifications on the part of the spectators, which is an invaluable field for the media coverage.