Abstract
In 1992, UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, replaced the final rounds of the European Cup with a mini-league competition called ‘The Champions League’ and developed three symbols to market this new competition. This article draws on Barthes’s semiology to examine the political significance of these symbols. It claims that the symbols developed by UEFA communicate a sense of tradition of which UEFA is the guardian. In this way, the symbols seek to suppress the current political tensions within European football between UEFA and the big European clubs.
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