THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS: A BALKANS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The study aims to present the changing role of the Southwest European countries in the continent’s football life from a basic sport-geographical perspective by analyzing the achievements and participation of these countries in the European Championships. The aim of the present paper is to explore how the differences observed on the continent are reflected in Balkans and what changes have taken place between 1960 and 2021. The study focuses on the flow of goods and services with a special attention to the region under scrutiny, in particular on the migration of players from the Balkans to other football regions and vice versa.Respectively, the findings of the study are based on the statistics of the European Football Championships. The results show that integration has also reached football, therefore, after the collapse of communist regimes, the region has become part of the global player flow, with the main direction being Western Europe and to a lesser extent Latin Europe, too. At the same time, football has increasingly become a vehicle of national pride and identity.