Collectivities, Football and Identification: When a Player Re-signifies the Meaning of a Team
The motivation for this article’s engagement with the formation of collectivities arose from an unexpected and emotionally charged development for many people, related to the Greek football scene. Football in Greece has traditionally held a prominent position among the preferences of citizens, not merely as a sport, but primarily because of the emotional identification that supporters develop with their teams. At the center of public attention in recent days has been the transfer of the football player Giannis Konstantelias from PAOK, a football club with tens of thousands of supporters in Greece and around the world. The transfer has provoked strong reactions and brought to the forefront questions concerning the formation of groups, their significance in both the public and private spheres, and the need for individuals to belong to such groups as a precursor to the fulfilment of their identity and personality.
The case in question concerns the transfer of attacking midfielder Giannis Konstantelias from PAOK, the Thessaloniki-based football club, to the German club Borussia Dortmund. Obviously, Konstantelias is neither the first nor the last Greek athlete to accept a transfer to a foreign club in order to develop his abilities and reach the peak of his career. Nevertheless, the case of Konstantelias deserves particular attention, as it provides an opportunity to reflect on and reconsider just how significant belonging to collectivities ultimately is for human beings, and how such belonging can influence entire aspects of their everyday lives.
According to social psychology, individuals possess a certain degree of freedom of choice when deciding whether to join groups that have recreational characteristics at their core, such as book clubs, dance associations, and, in our case, the choice to support a sports team. The sense of belonging, social gathering, and the shared meeting place of a group’s members constitute the starting point for understanding the reasons behind individuals’ participation in such groups. A common interest in football is subsequently “colored” by the colours of the team with which an individual chooses to align themselves. The members of a group acquire a collective identity which, in order to assert its presence, must differentiate itself from others, presenting its own distinctive form of organization, cohesion, and communication.
An individual who becomes part of a group may experience, through the influence of that group, a significant alteration in their psychological activity, with emotionality often increasing dramatically while rational judgement decreases correspondingly. It can therefore be argued that emotional investment in a team is a characteristic, if not necessary, condition that preserves its cohesion and resilience. It also helps explain both the way in which the group is organized and the reactions of its members to changes or threats that disrupt its normal functioning.
In the present case study, the departure of a player who had become a symbol of PAOK -a player who had been elevated, both by the club itself and, more importantly, by its supporters, into a distinctive emblem- provoked a variety of reactions. These culminated in the organization of a protest outside the club’s administrative offices on the very day of his departure from Greece.
Konstantelias’s role, from a certain point onwards, ceased to be limited to that of one of the eleven principal players of PAOK and evolved into that of a focal point around which the club’s supporters were united. He was transformed into a symbol, elevated, and invested with a deeper meaning. The name “Konstantelias” was no longer an empty signifier; on the contrary, it became inextricably associated with PAOK, to the point that hearing his name directly evoked the black-and-white team of Thessaloniki.
With his transfer and departure, however, the image of Konstantelias acquired a new meaning and was re-signified, becoming “dislocated”, since the pronunciation of his name could no longer refer exclusively to the team with which he had been so closely identified. This transfer, like many others in the international football arena, acquires a new semantic dimension, as such events may be experienced as dislocating experiences of re-signification. They fundamentally alter the symbolic framework that the members of a collective had previously shared.
Within this context of disruption of what had previously been taken for granted, the shared meanings and symbols of the group’s members are transformed. As a long-standing PAOK supporter, Mr. Giorgos, explains regarding Konstantelias’s departure:
“Although we had been expecting it since last year, the confirmation of his departure came as a shock -negatively so- not only on an sporting level, but also in terms of interpersonal relationships. Of course, I cannot ignore what has been happening internally within the club, at an administrative level, which obviously intensified the situation and angered the supporters, on the one hand because of the underhanded way in which the transfer was handled, and on the other because of how quickly everything happened. We were not given the space or the time to process and come to terms with it.”
A similar perspective is expressed by Despoina, a supporter and member of PAOK’s swimming team:
“I was part of the PAOK family for several years through the swimming department. However, I also enjoyed following his progress across all sports, both team and individual. From a certain point onwards, Konstantelias ceased to be perceived by supporters simply by his name. Every reference to him was made through nicknames and affectionate diminutives associated with his extraordinary talent, such as ‘the magician’ who makes the ball disappear on the pitch. It was expected that his departure would cause a wave of reactions and considerable turmoil. He was not simply a player of the team; he was connected to it to such an extent that I believe he himself saw his identity as intertwined with PAOK. Such identifications do not end well when they cease to exist.”
Football, therefore, becomes more than a game. It becomes a social and symbolic space in which the “I” finds its place within a powerful “we.” The departure of a player who has become intertwined with the collective identity of a club can consequently be experienced not merely as a sporting development, but as a disruption of shared meanings, emotional bonds, and established forms of identification. In this sense, the case of Konstantelias illustrates how individuals, symbols, and collectivities continuously shape and reshape one another.
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