Euro 2024: Sport values and football idols in the society of the spectacle

Abstract

Football was created within British public schools in the mid-19th century. It was a leisure sport for the middle classes’ boys. From the beginning of the 20th century, as its audience grew and national championships followed one after the other, football became a popular game, a symbol of the working classes. The culmination of all this was the organization of football matches on a continental and global scale. A few years after the First World War and after the success of the first Olympic Games, the first World Cup was organized in Uruguay in 1930. In the same spirit, the Nations Cups by continent were organized after World War II.

In the era of supranational aggregations, the World Cup and the Euro have emerged as a powerful means of glorifying nations, sometimes nationalism and in some cases authoritarian regimes and ideologies. However, all this goes against the admitted fundamental values of sport that refer to the peaceful coexistence of people, solidarity and the promotion of humanitarian values. The aim of this text is to analyze some aspects of the last Euro in German stadiums in 2024 in the light of this hiatus.