Yemen Herald News 
Sports have long, since ancient times among the Greeks up to the present day, been considered the most important tools for instilling the national spirit and for inscribing the collective identity of any given nation. However, they have always been more than physical competition; they have helped people define who they are as individuals, communities, and nations. From ancient rituals and civic festivals to modern international competitions, mega-events, and global fandom, sport has repeatedly functioned as a powerful marker of identity.
As sports are one of the most important loci in the formation of people’s identities, we can notice the involvement of the European countries in a wide range of athletic activities of all types. They always arrange and participate in sports competitions of all types at the national and continental levels. These hectic European atheistic activities at the levels of local sport clubs or at the national teams are only part of the process of peaceful release of the toxic inclinations of national bigotry. Sport competitions are a form of emancipation from the violent egocentric tendency toward the peaceful celebration of cosmopolitan diversity after a long, painful history of wars and conflicts. The sports competitions at the international level are a form of displacement of the conflicts from battlefields to sports arenas. However, either on battlefields or in sports venues, both the individual and national identities are at stake. George Orwell argued that modern sport, especially at the international level, becomes a symbolic form of war, where identity and rivalry are at stake. Thus, the winning of the French national team is nothing but Napoleonic conquests, and the victories of the Germanic clubs or national team are nothing but Bismarckian conquests, and likewise Garibaldian Italy and Victorian Britain.
However, instead of resorting to force or waging wars, nations and countries show their power and seek recognition through competing in a more civilized and elegant manner, which is sports competitions. The international sports contests represent the human journey from the primitive, aggressive, barbarian stage of history into the modern civilized stage. They reflect people’s abilities to tame themselves and to restrain their destructive impulses. They show how people can turn their conflicts from conflicts of weapons and politics into sporting championships.
Such international sports events as the current World Cup competition provide the nations and countries all over the world with a space for displaying uniqueness and for achieving distinction based on equality and on the principle of equal opportunity. The World Cup tournament is one of the rare occasions that transcends differences and celebrates diversity. It surpasses the political and economic hierarchy of power. It places the third world on an equal footing with the first world. It brings the third world to the first world sports arenas without restrictions, and it forces the first world to step down its ivory tower, taking it to the third world stadiums. In sports in general, and in football, in particular, there are no boundaries and no power hierarchy. All countries, nations, people, and players are equal, and all are subject to the same rules and laws. In sports venues, the relationships between nations, countries, national football teams, football clubs, and football fans are established on a basis of equality, visibility, and mutual respect. The international sports competitions transcend all forms of injustice, inequality, and all kinds of religious, ethnic, social, and cultural exclusions. They eliminate all kinds of class, gender, and racial discrimination through a wholesale process of justice and equality.
However, the sports yards are spaces in which power struggle is not measured by scientific progress, technological development or economic power, but by a mixed blend of subjective conditions. They integrate the individual with team efforts. They include, but are not limited to, individual fitness, the most skillful and adept, the most devoted and hardworking, the best performing, the most entertaining, the luckiest, the most committed to tactics, and the most dedicated to teamwork. If the sports club or team enjoyed the above-mentioned merit, it can win the play, and it can attract the attention of others, obtaining their admiration, getting the approval of the others’ gaze, and achieving recognition. Nonetheless, at the political. Economic and military levels, the strong and weak, as well as the superior and inferior, are known ahead, and the recognition is a one-way street. In sport, it is a two-way street.
International sports events are deeply tied to national identity by giving countries a space to display, celebrate, and negotiate who they are. Events like the World Cup stir national dignity and enhance national pride, transforming athletes into national symbols. They allow governments, media, and fans to ascribe sporting success to collective identity. They also shape identity through storytelling. Media coverage, ceremonies, flags, anthems, and public celebrations turn sport into a shared national narrative, so that wins and losses are experienced as national achievements or setbacks.
The individual and collective identity are structured through intricate and complex psychological, social, economic, political, and cultural processes. One of the most integral and structural processes that determines the process of identity formation is achieving recognition. However, sports are one of the domains that satisfy the demand of recognition – that is, a decisive element in identity construction – at the individual, social, and national levels. At the individual level, it helps the individual to engage in communal activity that facilitates and accelerates the process of their integration into society. Thus, by being a fan of the national team, the individual becomes a recognized member of a vast group that supports the national team at the level of the country. His existence as a citizen of his country is strengthened through his joining of the big circle of the national team that extends to include the whole country. As one of his national team fans, he is going to engage in group activities that reinforce his sense of belonging to the community. He is going to undergo a shared experience that endorses him a collective, effective communal communication that enables him, in the end, to achieve mutual recognition. As a member of the national team supporters, he is going to watch the sports matches of his team. He is going to keep up with the national team’s news. He is going to put on the national team uniform. The wearing of the same clothes that the team and its fans put on is one of the most important mechanisms of the recognition process. At the micro level, you are sharing the same shirt that holds the number of your favorite player. In turn, you are going to achieve recognition with a proxy by identifying with your favorite player. At the macro level, you are going to share with the majority of your community a given shirt of a given color that carries your country’s flag, and that becomes the distinctive kit of your national team. Accordingly, you are going to share the same clothes with the whole community. You are going to become one of them, and they are going to admit your existence within the community. Thus, you achieve recognition of conformity.
Recognition is at the heart of identity formation at the level of the individual or at the community level. Sports, besides some forms of arts and entertainment, royal families, and any activity or profession that ascribes their members with a reputation and fame that make them celebrities, provide the individual with a chance of substitute recognition or recognition with a proxy. The people who undergo this kind of recognition are those who desire success and distinction, but they are incapable of achieving it. They fail to achieve distinction or conformity due to such reasons as poverty, bad luck, or the lack of mental and physical qualities. The individuals who lead humble and mediocre lives in general find pleasure and satisfaction with the substitute recognition or a recognition with proxy that is achieved through hero-worship or by identifying with celebrities. It is a form of idolatry aroused by the celebrities and famous people. Thus, the individual consoles himself for his failure and his mediocre life by the idol’s glory, luxury, and achievements. He keeps up with the idol’s news and shows great interest in every detail of the idol’s life. Nevertheless, the football fans practice hero worship and idolatry. The football fans find in the famous and skilled players a successful and distinctive substitute for their failure. They admire the football players to enjoy the vibes of their success. The fans admire the player and beautify him and benefit from the indirect reflection of this beauty. They enjoy the aura of the player’s achievement. The fans thought that they contributed to the player’s deed by watching and praising them. In idolatry, the idol performs the act; the writer writes, the musician composes and plays on stage, and the football players play on the stadium, and the fans enjoy the benefits of his glorious deed without doing anything. In this form of substitute recognition or recognition with proxy, the mental laziness and the self-imposed disability become a kind of virtue according to Jung. However, we achieve recognition at the individual level by means of what is termed recognition with proxy. Through the proxy, we inflate our existence with meaning and value. The athletes represent proxies for our identities. We identify with the famous and skillful sports players embracing their glory, assuming their success for ourselves. Thus, we try our best to attend the sports events in order to meet or watch our sports figures. We exert efforts to follow their news and to watch their sports matches because they have become part of ourselves. They become structural parts of our identities. They became part of our identities.
Hero worship, however, evokes in those who practice it a matrix of unique emotions and provides them with the feelings of being exclusively part of and publicly belonging to a group, a prestigious one; that is, of the star’s admirers. In this sense, the experience of hero worship comes close to that of members of any group who draw the recognition of conformity from simply belonging. Meeting another admirer warms the heart; each is reassured in his convictions by the others. The supporter of the sports team receives recognition by the success of the team as much as by the satisfaction he or she obtains from belonging to the community of the admirers. Belonging to a group that we have not chosen cannot provide us with satisfaction and cannot be considered a palliative as such. Everyone feels reassured about his existence only when he experiences his freedom to its fullest, by selecting with his own free will, to which group he should belong. It is only through the act of selecting his own group, apart from the social, cultural, and political determinations, that the individual is going to become reassured about his existence. He is going to find the real meaning of his life in finding himself in a familiar framework and among his own kind. However, the loyalty to a team or athlete becomes, for its supporters, part of personal identity, shaping how they narrate their own lives and affiliations. Modern sport, therefore, works both as a mirror of identity and as a tool for making identity visible to others.
Eventually, sport has consistently helped people define belonging. Its forms have changed, but its social function has remained strikingly similar: to embody values, strengthåen communities, and express collective identity. What changed over time is the scale of that identity, moving from local and religious affiliations to national and global ones. Sport thus remains one of the clearest examples of how culture, power, and identity intersect across history.
Dr. Sadek Alsalemi
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