Session 3: The World Cup and national identity

Introduction

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A photograph of football fans wearing bright colours and celebrating.

Within this session you will explore the notion of national identity through the lens of the World Cup. The event provides endless opportunity to consider the nature of their own and others’ national identity. During tournaments, a ‘carnivalesque’ atmosphere is often witnessed with fans displaying their national colours through clothes and symbols. The World Cup also provides a stage for cultural and religious diversity, as examples throughout this section will highlight.

Conversely, the World Cup can also instigate debates about poor fan behaviour and its relationship to national identity. For example: some English fans have often been criticised for their actions.

The Özil quote above followed Germany’s exit at the group stage in the 2018 men’s World Cup. Members of the German Football Association and far-right politicians blamed Mesut Özil for the nation’s performance. A key stimulus to the criticism was Özil’s decision to pose with the Turkish President prior to the tournament, at a time of heightened tensions between Germany and Turkey. Özil, being of Turkish heritage, explained that he was simply being respectful to his ancestors’ roots. This event underscores how delicate discussion of identity and belonging can be.

Before you get started on this session, take a few moments to listen to the audio between Steph Doehler (course author) and Professor Alan Bairner, who reflect on the concept of national identity in relation to sport, offering interesting grounding on how they interact with one another.

Download this audio clip.Audio player: Audio 1

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Transcript: Audio 1 Steph Doehler and Alan Bairner on the concept of national identity

STEPH DOEHLER

So Alan, what does national identity actually mean when it comes to the world of sport, and more specifically the FIFA World Cup?

ALAN BAIRNER

Well, possibly, we might be led into this by George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, 1984, and his comments about international sport, where he said this is, frankly, mimic warfare, or sometimes rendered as war minus the shooting. I would say that Orwell himself clearly had a very low opinion of sport, and possibly the product of his boarding school days at Eaton College. But I think there’s some sense in what he was saying - that sometimes sporting rivalries do keep alive the kind of enmities that have existed in the past, and have resulted in an armed conflict.

On the other hand, of course, there’s a strong lobby who would say that sport provides a good way, a good safety valve almost for expressing national feelings, national sentiments, even quite oppositional ones, but letting off steam in that regard, and not necessarily allowing these to turn into full-scale conflict or war. So there are different ways of looking at this. I mean, before even saying anything about football, I think the rivalry in cricket between India and Pakistan is a good example-- not least because it’s been so difficult in recent years to even organise a test match series between the two countries, where there is a genuine feeling that some incident in the crowd or an incident by some dissident group might actually lead to conflict between, of course, two countries that have nuclear weapons. So that’s a particularly extreme case of how national identity could actually enter into the world of sport, and go beyond that.

End transcript: Audio 1 Steph Doehler and Alan Bairner on the concept of national identity

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Audio 1 Steph Doehler and Alan Bairner on the concept of national identity

Through this session you will be introduced to the concepts of citizenship, nation and nationality, and explore examples of how these issues permeated through football. You will also examine how the Qatar World Cup in 2022 is being used to forge a new identity for the Qatari population.