European Football and Collective Memory

Is it possible for football matches or players to help forge a collective European identity? Pyta and Havemann seek to answer this question through a detailed analysis of how football games and stars are remembered across the continent. In this context, a range of important events and renowned players are discussed, from the Heysel disaster to George Best, and the Real Madrid of Alfredo Di Stéfano and Ferenc Puskás to the famous Wembley goal in the 1966 World Cup final. The book also examines the history of UEFA as an institution and producer of pan-European competitions across the Iron Curtain, with a unique emphasis on what kind of memory remains from the transnational encounters between East and West.

European Football and Collective Memory is the first book to examine the collective memory of football on a continental scale, providing a rich cultural-historical exploration of the memorial and sepulchral culture which forms an integral part of football.

Wolfram Pyta is Chair of Modern History at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He has produced numerous publications on European and German history, from the seven years war to the history of the Bundesliga.
 

Nils Havemann is a Research Fellow at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He is the author of Football Under the Swastika (2005) and Saturdays at Half 3 (2013).

1. Introduction: Football Memory in a European Perspective; Wolfram Pyta
2. How are Football Games Remembered? Idioms of Memory in Modern Football; Tobias Werron
3. Negotiating the Cold War? Perspectives in Memory Research on the UEFA, the Early European Football Competitions and the European Nations Cups; Jürgen Mittag
4. UEFA Football Competitions as European Sites of Memory: Cups of Identity?; Michael Groll
5. The Contribution of Real Madrid's First Five European Cups to the Emergence of a Common Football Space; Borja García-García, Ramón Llopis-Goig and Agustín Martín
6. Football and the European Collective Memory in Britain: the Case of the 1960 European Cup Final; Geoff Hare
7. Erecting a European 'Lieu de mémoire'? Media Coverage of the 1966 World Cup and French Discussions about the 'Wembley Goal'; Jean Christophe Meyer
8. George Best, a European Symbol, a European Hero?; David Ranc
9. Heysel and its Symbolic Value in Europe's Collective Memory; Clemens Kech
10. Football Sites of Memory in the Eastern Bloc 1945–1991; Seweryn Dmowski
11. Rituals and Practices of Memorial Culture in Football; Markwart Herzog