Football, National Narratives and the Cumulative Media Effect

Abstract

On 21 June 2000, the Spanish national team played one of the most memorable games in the history of the European football championships. Needing a win to qualify for the quarter-finals, Spain faced Yugoslavia in the last match of the group stage of Euro 2000. Two minutes into injury time, however, the Spaniards were 2-3 down and their situation seemed hopeless. What followed was a remarkable feat of survival. In the 93rd minute, the referee awarded Spain a penalty and Gaizka Mendieta calmly scored from the spot. Two minutes later, Pep Guardiola’s long cross found Ismael Urzaiz, whose header was agonisingly half-volleyed by Alfonso Pérez to give Spain the match and a place in the quarter-finals. The Spanish press presented the comeback as the product of a unique national ‘courage’, a particular ‘fury’ which gave Spaniards the will to fight when everything seemed to be lost.² What could not be achieved through playing good football and creating chances, the sports correspondent of the daily ABC explained, had been accomplished through ‘heroism, bravery and self-esteem’.³

‘The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people’

(Eric Hobsbawm)¹