Naming and Lower Cases as Diplomatic Tools in Sport? The Case of ‘SPAIN v. kosovo’ During Qatar 2022 World Cup Qualifiers

National Recognition and Power Relations in Sport from International Relations

Even when the study of sport from IR theory has been almost non-existent until the last decade of the XX century, both are historically connected. IR and Olympic sport were conceived as a direct answer to war, and nowadays, through the development of diplomatic and sporting theory and practice, the UN and the IOC have among their goals the development of a more peaceful way of relationship between states (IOC news, 2009). But we would be foolish if we believed that the national and sporting interest of countries is something as naïve as achieving world peace. According to Stuart Murray (2018, p. 3), sport diplomacy means the conscious, strategic and ongoing use of sport, sportspeople and sporting events by state and non-state actors to advance policy, trade, development, education, image, reputation, brand and people-to-people links’. In other words, sport is an active part of the foreign policy whose role and design depends on national (or subnational) governments and it is implemented through NOCs, National Federations (NFs), sports clubs and even relevant individual athletes.

Therefore, a meeting point between IR theory and sport is the role of the state. Even when the different paradigms of IR like realism, neoliberalism or constructivism differ in defining the best way to proceed in an anarchic international system, all of them understand that states are the main or at least a central actor of the international system. This idea is translated into sport through the concept of ‘sport statehood’, which means that for the IOC and the IFs the state is the main political actor in the international sport system since it is the only one that has a direct representation in sports competitions through its NOCs and NFs (Pulleiro Méndez, 2020, pp. 192–193). Since 1996, the Olympic Charter clarifies that for the recognition of a NOC by the IOC, it is required to prove the existence and legitimacy of the country that the NOC represents, defining country as ‘an independent State recognized by the international community’ (IOC, 2021, p. 68). Both UEFA and FIFA followed the IOC’s path and changed the country definition of their statutes in 2001 and 2004 respectively. For UEFA, the recognition of an NF is attached to being recognized by the UN as an independent state, while FIFA defined country as being an independent state recognized by the international community (Court of Arbitration for Sport, 2016). In practical terms, recognition is only guaranteed to states that emerge from consensual secession processes, which are almost immediately recognized by the UN, as in the cases of Montenegro or South Sudan.

However, this is a field where consensus among the IOC, FIFA and IFs with states is not so common to achieve. Precisely, the aforementioned changes in the statutes of UEFA and FIFA were an answer to Gibraltar’s attempt since 1991 to be recognized by both football institutions, being the RFEF the main objector due to its historical claim of sovereignty over the territory of Gibraltar, which is a British Overseas Territory since 1713 (Court of Arbitration for Sport, 2016). Considering that UEFA and FIFA recognized Gibraltar in 2013 and 2016 respectively, the sporting recognition of contested states and disputed territories consists on a very long process whose resolution relies mainly on the power relations at the international level, including the diplomatic mobilization at the UN (at least more than 50% of the UN member states), the IOC and IFs (Pulleiro Méndez, 2020).

In the end, state goals and policies are determined by its national capacities (Pulleiro Méndez, 2021; Morales Ruvalcaba & Rocha Valencia, 2022), meaning that the state behavior in sport referring not only to national recognition but also to participation/boycott, performance and hosting sport events, is firstly conditioned by the power relations at state level in the international system. As Waltz explains, “structures shape and shove; they encourage states to do some things and to refrain from doing others”, (1997, p. 915) meaning that the relative state power determines the possibilities and limitations of the foreign policy of a given country. Being more specific in terms of sports diplomacy, this means that not all countries have the same capacity to persuade the IOC, IFs and/or other countries either through attraction (soft power) or coercion (hard power).

To understand the political stance of the IOC and IFs, firstly we need to consider how international institutions function as an extension of state power or if they are just means for achieving their goals. For example, both the IOC and IFs consider the political neutrality and autonomy of sport as key fundamentals to guarantee the right of every country to host and compete in sporting events when international political conflicts surge. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has demonstrated how the IOC, FIFA and the rest of IFs ultimately succumbed to the political pressure from Western countries (national governments and their federations) to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes from a large majority of international sport competitions (Sky Sports, 2022; Iveson, 2022).

Secondly, we need to consider how the power of contested and small states is not defined by the limited “power they possess”, but by the “power they exercise” (Steinmetz & Wivel, 2010, p. 7). In sport, it means that these kind of countries still have a margin to defend their interests against consolidated states and/or bigger sporting powers. A classic example would be the difficulties for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to impose its ‘One-China policy’ over Taiwan into the IOC and the rest of IFs until the late 70s, even considering that the PRC was a nuclear power and an important economy that took Taiwan’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 1971.

However, even the full recognition of NOCs and/or NFs by the IOC, FIFA and IFs does not guarantee a participation without political issues for contested states in international sport competitions. Eventually, sporting recognition is not the same as political recognition and NOCs and NFs are formally independent from their national governments, needing to abide the regulations of the IOC and IFs. Nevertheless, since NOCs and NFs act as governmental agencies for sport in their countries, national governments impose on them “restrictions, objectives and obligations”, needing also to meet “the expectations of the governments and governmental policy priorities” (Scheerder et al., 2017, pp. 305–306). In practice, this means that NOCs and NFs need to comply with their governments' policies on diplomatic recognition, and therefore, the IOC and IFs may even need to threaten with sanctions to ensure that the international sports recognition is applied properly according to their rules.

Names as a Political Tool in Sport

Naming is among the many ways in which sporting (non-)recognition involves relevant political issues. It goes beyond adding up mere labels to people, places, events, or, as in our case, states/countries (Satha-Anand, 2018; Parkin, 1998). There seems to be consensus among scholars when considering that it asserts, implies and contains elaborated power relations (Satha-Anand, 2018; Peteet, 2005; Alia, 2007). The capacity to name but also to unname is a core element of the identity-making process whilst becoming as “powerful rhetorical tool for both defense and offence” (Brennan Croft, 2015, p. 109).

The relevance of names as tools in IR can be perceived at the very management of the UN. As Zaikos (2010, p. 343) recalls, since 1967 the UN hosts, every 5 years, a session of the Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (UNCSGN) to discuss the set-up of the internationally official names of each country. In sport, since 1978 the Olympic Charter states that “the name of an NOC must reflect the territorial extent and tradition of that country, and must be approved by the IOC” (IOC, 1978, p. 15). Two major points derive from such a statement: the central role of names in identifying the participating actors and the need to count on its external approval. Thus, we can find examples of sporting institutions requesting a change of their official nomenclatures in international governing bodies: the Czech Republic formally asking the IOC to switch its name to “Czechia” (Lloyd, 2022), or Wales’ deliberation to follow suit with UEFA and FIFA to shift to “Cymru” (Barker, 2022). This seemingly inseparable relation between naming, politics and power relations has been defined by Alia (2007, p. 458) as “political onomastics”, the politics of naming.

Discourse and naming are intimately related to conflicts and their resolutions (Bhatia, 2005, p. 8). Every social agent aspires to have the power of naming, and so shape the world through its own understanding (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 105). To a larger extent, this is a manifestation of the many disputes for the symbolic signification in the political spheres; the representation or construction of a particular meaning to a particular entity (Wright, 1998). Paraphrasing and adapting Riches’ dissertations on violence (1988), naming could be defined as the result of a dispute for the signification. This involves different actors that, from a range of positions, strive for imposing a sense, a meaning. Additionally, it implies certain tensions around legitimacies since what is legitimate for ones may not be for others. Consequently, referring to a counterpart in one specific way or another involves and applies a series of characteristics to that particular actor that “help legitimise certain forms of inquiry, engagement and action, and delegitimize others” (Bhatia, 2005, p. 8). An example of this is the disputes between the PRC and Taiwan over the specific name of the latter’s NOC (Brownell, 2008). Nonetheless, a less confrontational situation is also observable. Agreements on the political stage have been transferred to the sporting environment in a cause-effect connection. The decades-long row between Macedonia and Greece over the name of the former came to a solution in 2019. From then on, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has been officially recognized as the Republic of Northern Macedonia. Immediately after, the IOC approved the name change of its NOC following an identical nomenclature (Mackay, 2019). Thus, we agree with Humphrey (2006, p. 158) in stating that, rather than a relation, this is a triangulation process whereby interactions imply those naming, those named plus the connotation of the name itself.

In a context of conflict between political actors, quite often names express an implicit criticism; nomenclatures become political weapons carrying the position of the name’s giver (Leguy, 2021). In a sense, names indicate a power negotiation. The choice of a specific name to refer to the counterpart reflects the relationship between addresser and addressee: an equal stand; a subordination whose aim is a bottom-up placating; or a top-down existing power by imposing or using a name, and so influencing the audience’s perceptions (Brennan Croft, 2015, p. 15).

Political onomastics is a contested space in current conflicts. As Bhatia (2005, pp. 6–8) underlines, it is about examining the creation, assignation and dispute of names. The ultimate purpose is to obtain a triumph of interpretation, thus ensuring that a specific perspective succeeds to the detriment of others. Establishing the nomenclatures to use in this sort of contexts can echo, uphold or contest power (Peteet, 2005, p. 154). This does not necessarily have to happen between two external actors. It can also occur internally as in the case of the Basque Country national football team between 2007 and 2009. At that time, the federation, players and even political parties disagreed about the name under which the side should participate -Euskal Herria or Euskadi. This led to the cancellation of the traditional Christmas match scheduled for 2008 versus Iran (Zakravský, 2016).

With all the above in mind, our work addresses the role of naming as a diplomatic tool in cases of sporting diplomatic conflict. From theory to a specific case study, it analyzes how relevant the name of Kosovo is for Spain in its use of sport to perform this state non-recognition.

Methodology

The study is based on a mixed quanti-qualitative approach. The documentation has been mainly gathered through desk-research. Following the guidelines of Skalski et al. (2017), we have applied a content analysis of three major transmedia sources through their corresponding websites: the official communiqués/press notes of the RFEF; the news posts by RTVE; as well as by three main private media outlets: Cadena Ser (radio station owned by the Prisa group), As (sports newspaper owned by the Prisa group) and Antena3 (television channel owned by the A3Media group). In the specific case of the RFEF, we also triangulated the information by adding its official Twitter account too: @SEFutbol. We consider it as necessary for a thorough analysis not only due to the current relevance of social media in political communication, but also because official Twitter accounts of national teams and clubs perform a live coverage of their matches, which is a necessary complement to study the consistency of RFEF with its own webpage.

The choice of RFEF and RTVE as sources of analysis respond to their direct involvement in the sporting and broadcasting fields, respectively, as bonded to the state guidance. A mention apart deserves the private media outlets. This is motivated, since they are not subject to the control of the state, and therefore, it allows comparing, contrasting and widening the reach of the communication strategy applied by the public broadcasting corporation. The deliberate selection of these three particular companies aims to offer a broad spectrum of the Spain-wide journalistic production. In fact, both the outlets and the owning groups cover some of the largest number of audiences in the country (keeping in mind the media concentration running throughout the territory), thus signifying a representative sample (Nogales Bocio & Mancinas-Chávez, 2014; Jones, 2007). Although regional press plays a relevant role in the journalistic landscape of Spain (Pérez-Serrano et al., 2020; Pérez-Serrano & García Santamaría, 2018), we have excluded this sort of outlets in order to find a nationwide reach and coverage.

All sorts of genres and content elements have been considered, like texts, graphics, videos and audios. The research focuses on three specific periods: the draft day and post-day (7-8 December 2020), when Spain and Kosovo were tied into the same qualifying group; and the two qualifying windows when both matches took place (15 March 2021–1 April 2021; 26 August 2021–9 September 2021). The period covered during each qualifying window starts with the official call-up announcement by the national coach and ends with the day immediately after the last match played. This time lapse has been particularly chosen due to two main reasons: the initial statement with the selected players implies mentioning the name of the team rivals, as well as a rising interest by the national media; whereas the lack of more games after the last challenge of the window consequently redirects the media focus to the domestic league.

We collected an overall of 573 posts mentioning the Kosovar team in some way, between tweets and news posts from all the sources during the three periods mentioned above. Once the information was refined, we worked on a classification with these topics structured on a matrix-table: date of post; issue (draft or qualifying window); rival (only if marked as qualifying window); number of mentions to Kosovo; and lexicon used (to refer to Kosovo).

Findings

Based on our analysis, we present the following findings divided into two main segments. The first one concerns RFEF and how it covered both the draw and the double game between the teams. The second one follows suit, focusing on RTVE along with a comparative approach of three private media outlets. This shows how the two executing actors addressed the national squad of Kosovo and so how the naming strategy was applied.

Spanish Football Federation

The first mention to Kosovo in the RFEF webpage is from October 2016. Since that date, it was mentioned 127 times in 72 articles, using either the name of the country or its many and creative derivatives like ‘Kosovar territory’, ‘Kosovar’, ‘Kosovar team’, ‘Kosovar national team’, ‘Kosovar territory’, ‘Pristina’, etc. Limited to the specific periods referred in the methodology, there are 77 mentions in 35 articles. Among all the different ways to refer to Kosovo, ‘Pristina’ is the most used with 36 repetitions in 19 articles; followed by ‘Kosovo’, with 13 repetitions in 12 articles; and ‘Kosovar national team’ and ‘Kosovar team’ with 7 repetitions in 7 and 4 articles respectively (Table 1).

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Table 1.

Lexicon Used Referring to Kosovo in the Spanish Football Federation Webpage.

Undoubtedly, ‘Pristina’ became the preferred term by RFEF since the Spanish national team prepared its trip to play in Kosovo. Between 6 September, last training day in Spain, and 9 September, the day after playing in Kosovo, ‘Pristina’ was used 33 out of the 44 times that the RFEF website referred to Kosovo in 16 different articles. This situation is in line with the aforementioned recommendation of the Spanish Government of avoiding the explicit mention of Kosovo. However, even when there was a retroactive application in the RFEF website, deleting in some articles phrases or pictures containing the word ‘Kosovo’, or replacing the original writing of ‘Kosovo’ with ‘Kosovar team’ for example ¹ , this recommendation was not consistently applied by the RFEF (Table 1).

Another strategy of the RFEF was to modify quotations from Luis Enrique, the manager of the Spanish national team. In the press conference held the day before the match played in Spain on 31 March 2021, Luis Enrique declared that ‘we have to beat Kosovo tomorrow’, but on the website it is written that “we have to beat the Kosovar team tomorrow” (RFEF, 2021). Inconsistency also happens here, because the video of the press conference containing the original words of Luis Enrique is accessible through the website article. Another example of this inconsistency is observed, for example, in the report of that match, referring to Kosovo in the text as ‘Kosovar team’, ‘Kosovar national team’ or even ‘the Balkans’. However, in the match stats it is written “yellow card to Kryezu (48´) from Kosovo”.

An important element to consider here is that different to English, demonyms and ethnonyms in Spanish are written in lowercase. Thus, following the Spanish state’s recommendation of avoiding the official name of Kosovo and using instead the word Kosovar (kosovar; territorio kosovar; combinado/selección/equipo kosovar) on a systematic manner, symbolically helps to display that Kosovo does not have the same political status as Spain. In the pictures, since RFEF uses a unicameral font, the approach was to capitalize only the ‘K’ letter of ‘Kosovo’ while Spain and the other countries of the group were all written in uppercase. In the official Twitter account of the Spanish national team, the pictures and gifs followed this same strategy, and even sometimes the writing of ‘Kosovo-SPAIN’ was missing in some gifs in comparison with the matches against Sweden and Georgia played in the same FIFA window of September.

The text of the tweets also tried to reflect the lower status of Kosovo, being here RFEF more consistently applying the recommendation of the Spanish Government than in the webpage. During the live coverage of both matches against Kosovo, the country name or any other political connotation like “Kosovar territory” or “Kosovar team” was not written at all. For example, in the match played in Kosovo, all the tweets used “Pristina” or the stadium name instead of “Kosovo”. There was not any tweet dedicated to the substitutions and the yellow card of Kosovo, and even when Kosovo scored a goal, only the name of the scorer was mentioned. Furthermore, Kosovo’s flag emoji was replaced by the hashtag #Kos. In comparison with the matches against Sweden, Georgia and Greece, the Twitter account of the Spanish national team wrote their country names and used their flag emojis in most of the tweets. In addition, the goals, substitutions and yellow cards were noted using also their country name.

RTVE and Private Media Outlets

RTVE referred to the Kosovar team 177 times in 70 news articles during the analyzed period. Comparing it with the private media used for this study, we can observe that the Spanish public broadcaster was the second outlet in absolute terms when covering and mentioning Kosovo. Only As created more content (77 news) and named it more (313 times). The other two stations remained relatively distant: Cadena Ser posted 22 articles regarding the Balkan country with an overall of 88 references, whereas Antena3 released 15 pieces of information totaling 77 cites. These figures turn to a different perspective when looking at the relative terms. In this aspect, RTVE presents the lowest ratio (2.53) of references to Kosovo’s national team. All the other private media outlets overcome the public broadcaster. Thus, Antena3 leads this particular ranking (5.13), followed by As (4.06) and Cadena Ser (4.00).

These figures show two remarkable aspects. On the one hand, RTVE did not refrain nor escape from informing about the Kosovar team. It is true, though, that it hosted the broadcasting rights for both the home and away matches, thus assuming a wide coverage. On the other hand, there is an inconsistent relationality between the number of news and the references to the Kosovar squad. The higher the former did not imply a larger mention of the latter.

Focusing on the naming strategy followed by RTVE requires a two-step process: the draft of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers and the qualifying windows when the matches took place. Looking at the lexicon used by the Spanish public broadcaster on the day and post-day of the draft (Table 2), we can observe a predominant use of the term “Kosovo” (27 times). In fact, all the cites to the Balkan team but two used the aforementioned name (93,10%). This tactic went hand in hand with that followed by the private media. In all the other three analyzed outlets, “Kosovo” is the most frequently used nomenclature when referring to the team. Cadena Ser mentioned it 12 times (80% of its mentions), whereas As did so 25 times (83,33%). These figures made RTVE the media using the term “Kosovo” the most. References such as “Kosovo national team” and “Kosovar squad” were also employed, but as a resource to provide some lexical richness.

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Table 2.

Lexicon Used Referring to Kosovo in Spanish Public Broadcaster and Private Media During Draft.

Media Outlet	# News Kosovo	# Cites Kosovo	Lexicon
RTVE	6	29	Kosovo (27x); National team of Kosovo; Kosovar squad
ANTENA 3	1	3	Kosovo (3x)
CADENA SER	2	15	Kosovo (12x); Kosovar football federation; Football Federation of Kosovo; Its national team
AS	8	30	Kosovo (25x); The Kosovars; The Balkan national team; the team of Bernard Challandes; Football Federation of Kosovo; Kosovar football federation

It is worth explaining a supplementary strategy that RTVE did apply during that period. Hours after the draw took place, the main news program covered the event on its sports segment. When announcing the outcome, the reporter did not avoid pronouncing the term “Kosovo” together with the display of its national flag. However, he added straight away the clarification that it is ‘a country that, by the way, Spain does not recognize’ (RTVE, 2020). By highlighting the non-recognition of Pristina’s government through its public media outlet, the state underlined the political status of Kosovo in Spain’s eyes.

The situation adopted a different approach when the matches took place (Table 3). In this period, RTVE only employed the term “Kosovo” 12 times out of the 148 references to the team (8,11%). The main nomenclatures used by the public broadcaster were ‘Kosovo’s Football Federation’ (65 times) and ‘FF Kosovo’ (34 times). Other forms such as ‘Kosovo’s Federation’, ‘the Kosovar team’, ‘the team of the Football Federation of Kosovo’ and more naming constructions supplemented these. This scenario contrasts with how the private media acted. All the other three analyzed outlets primarily used the term ‘Kosovo’ in this period. In fact, it outnumbered any other alternative. Antena3 utilized it 67 times (90,54%), As did so on 235 occasions (83,04%), whereas Cadena Ser applied it 54 times (73,97%).

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Table 3.

Lexicon Used Referring to Kosovo in Spanish Public Broadcaster and Private Media During the Qualifying Windows.

Media Outlet	# News Kosovo	# Cites Kosovo	Lexicon
RTVE	64	148	Football Federation of Kosovo (65x); FF Kosovo (34x); Kosovo (12x); Kosovo’s Federation (9x); the Kosovar team (7x); the team of the Football Federation of Kosovo (4x)…
ANTENA 3	14	74	Kosovo (67x); Kosovo’s football team (2x); the Kosovars; the locals…
CADENA SER	20	73	Kosovo (54x); the rival (6x); Kosovo’s national team (2x); them (2x); the Kosovar team; Bernard Challandes’; the Kosovar Federation…
AS	69	283	Kosovo (235x); the Kosovar team/squad (10x); the Kosovars/Balkans (9x); the team (7x); the locals/visitors (7x); the rival (6x)

This portrayal is particularly observed when looking at posts with multiple mentions. This is the case of two entries published on 31 March 2021, the day of the first-leg between Spain and Kosovo played in Seville. Both news publications add up 23 mentions to the Kosovar team and none of them used the term “Kosovo”, thus showing its systematic avoidance. In fact, this date comes shortly after the aforementioned recommendation of the Spanish Government in February 2021. However, this systematicity did not seem to be consistent. On that very same day, the term “Kosovo” appeared once. Its use increased along the qualifying windows, utilizing it 11 times between 6–8 September 2021, the period of the second-leg when both squads played in Pristina. On top of that, it is significant to underline that five out of the 12 times the term “Kosovo” was used by RTVE came from the same post: the report published on 8 September 2021, some minutes after the game finished. Thus, we can observe that the use of terms other than “Kosovo” became an alternative for the private media in a search for lexical richness; whilst it represented a deliberate strategy for RTVE in an attempt not to mention it.

Complementary to the methodology applied in this study, and in order to gain perspective on the issue, it is worth mentioning an episode that happened with the games’ narrations. Thus, during the broadcast of the first-leg played in Spain, the RTVE commentators did not mention Kosovo, consequently searching for alternatives when referring to the opposite team. This was supplemented with the display of the abbreviation “ESP-kos” in the scoreboard: similarly to what happened with RFEF, Spain (ESP) was represented with capital letters whereas lower cases were used for Kosovo (kos).

Discussion

According to the findings, we need to evaluate how successful the strategy of the Spanish government was in terms of avoiding the explicit mention of Kosovo to reflect its political non-recognition. Bhatia (2005) underlines in this regard that the purpose of a discursive conflict is to ensure that a particular interpretation wins. He states that, when assigned, the power of naming normally makes the process of its selection vanish whilst attaching a series of motives to the named subject. Likewise, Satha-Anand (2018) considers that the popular use of a name can make a new normality emerge where questioning merely happens. As we can observe, that was not the effect obtained at national level. RFEF and RTVE, both directly connected to the State, applied the governmental recommendation but inconsistently, using the term “Kosovo” several times after each organization was notified. On the contrary, private media outlets were not concerned at all about this recommendation, being the term “Kosovo” was the most mentioned one during our period of analysis.

This disparity matched the lack of consensus at Spanish political level. The double game between Spain and Kosovo prompted an overall registration of 11 official requests from all types of ideological parties. More than three fourths (8/11) of them addressed this naming strategy. Thus, mainly Basque and Catalonian nationalist parties demanded the central government and RTVE to explain why the journalists avoided mentioning “Kosovo”; whether the government ordered RTVE to manipulate that coverage; why the scoreboard was altered and what consequences it might bring (EH Bildu, 2021, Junts per Catalunya, 2022). RTVE declared that the communication strategy was aligned with “journalistic and informative” criteria. Additionally, it admitted following the obligations incorporated within the legal mandate frame ruling the corporation, thus adopting the term Federación de Fútbol de Kosovo in order to “capture the official line of the Spanish state about Kosovo”, the reason why the scoreboard was also modified (RTVE, 2021). On the contrary, the public broadcaster did not acknowledge any manipulation of the Spanish government, thus assuming the design of the coverage.

Contrary to RTVE and the private media outlets, RFEF also had to comply with FIFA/UEFA rules, being the Football Federation of Kosovo (FFK) on alert about any possible incident concerning its political symbology. In this regard, the naming policy of Spain caught the eye of the FFK on 9 March 2021, when the Spanish national team announced on its website and Twitter its call-up announcement for the first-leg referring to Kosovo as “territory of Kosovo”. The FFK published that same day a blunt statement defending that Kosovo is an independent state, denouncing the destructive “approach of the Spanish state towards the state of Kosovo”, asking for a rectification and demanding that its national team “will play only according to strict UEFA criteria, with the flag and anthe” (FFK, 2021b). With the threat of seeking protection from UEFA if FFK’s demands were not guaranteed, RFEF did not have other choice than expressing to FFK its “regret for the news published” plus confirming that “the match will take place in accordance with the FIFA and UEFA regulations and protocols for official matches” (FFK, 2021a), as it finally happened.

On the one hand, this confirms that naming was not only a political issue in Spain, but also in Kosovo. In fact, this incident was the perfect window of opportunity to assure the display of Kosovo’s political symbology in Spain during the 2022 World Cup qualifiers. On the other hand, this confirms that the balance of power in diplomatic terms is on the Kosovar side referring to sport, leaving Spain with very little room for maneuver. In a few years, Spain has passed from limiting Kosovo’s participation in sports events through delaying visas, rejecting passports and not displaying its flag and anthem, to publicly guaranteeing in advance that Kosovo will play as any other state recognized by FIFA/UEFA. In other words, the diplomatic mobilization capacity of Kosovo in the last years compelled FIFA, UEFA, IOC and other IFs to respect the rights associated with the full recognition of its members. Consequently, it limits the impact of the Spanish sports diplomacy towards Kosovo just to the naming, being its effect even more restricted because it cannot affect the protocols of sporting events in terms of national political symbology.

These limitations emphasized the role played by RTVE in the holistic Spanish approach to the issue. By being exempted from the protocolary ties of FIFA/UEFA, the public broadcaster could remain as one of the few bastions through which to execute this naming strategy. Following Bourdieu (1986, pp. 480–481), “the power to impose recognition [of a name] depends on the capacity to mobilise around a name”. The measure did not seem to be effective since it lacked internalization at home while coupling, one more time, with the alerts raised in Kosovo through its media. Apart from the inconsistency when applying the policy by the public broadcaster, the RTVE’s own News Council criticized this move by considering it “a mistake”, especially when the Kosovar case had already been addressed in the political news writing (RTVE, 2021). Furthermore, the rest of the Spanish private outlets did not follow suit. Far from assuming it, they even questioned this proceeding. Stations such as Cadena Ser dedicated part of its pre-analysis on the second-leg to the way RTVE had avoided mentioning “Kosovo” months before. Actually, one of its journalists declared that “I said Kosovo and will continue to say Kosovo” (Cadena Ser, 2021). This collapses what Wright (1998) considers to be the three phases in the process for the dispute of a signification: the unmasked attempt to redefine certain key symbols by identified agents; the institutionalization of a particular perspective along with its establishment through a power that does not require any further agents; and, finally, the settlement of this new key term in new domains, thus becoming a diffuse and prevalent way of thinking in daily life. Hence, all the above shows that for a naming strategy to be naturally viewed by an audience, and so effective, not only the authority of the “name-giver” is determinant (Bhatia, 2005). It also requires an internalization of the message by the social actors and the community as a whole.

Conclusions

Once again, the Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifiers has represented another dilemma for Spain in its diplomatic relationship with Kosovo: defending its political non-recognition while respecting the political symbology of Kosovo since it is recognized as a full member by FIFA and UEFA. Under the threat of sanctions by the IOC and IFs if Spain does not respect the rights and political symbols of Kosovo; the Spanish government decided that a naming strategy based on avoiding the explicit mention of Kosovo was the best course of action.

According to our analysis, on the one hand, RFEF as the governing body for football in Spain, and RTVE as the public broadcaster who had the rights for these games, applied the governmental recommendation but inconsistently. On the other hand, instead of assuming the governmental naming strategy, private media questioned this proceeding. In addition, Kosovo’s football federation reacted to the RFEF naming policy not only demanding to play under strict UEFA rules but also defending that Kosovo is an independent state, forcing the RFEF to confirm that the match would be played according to UEFA and FIFA regulations and protocols.

Therefore, in relation to our research objectives and questions, this study concludes in first place that the sporting agenda at national level is shaped by the political agenda. Even when NOCs and NFs are forced to abide IOC and IFs rules, being formally independent from their national governments; they are not completely free from governmental restrictions and obligations, especially when it affects key issues of foreign policy. However, membership to international sporting bodies implies that a series of minimum requirements must be met in international sporting competitions as established by the competing protocols. This means that the maneuverability of the state is reduced for political purposes. That is why Spain was forced to de-escalate its previous boycotting measures to Kosovar delegations, meaning that a naming policy was the only plausible alternative to perform its political non-recognition of Kosovo during the Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifiers.

Secondly, in terms of relevance and success, even when the act of not showing Kosovo’s name is a challenge aiming to deny its existence, a performance to prove how Spain does not recognize this particular state; the inconsistencies found underline that the strategy leads to a failure when the discourse is not internalized by the different executing agents. Since having a nomenclature prevailed depends on the ability to have certain lexicon accepted, which cannot be done in a very short time, the Spanish state naming strategy was almost dead from the start.

Likewise, naming as a political tool in sporting diplomatic conflicts seems to follow a bidirectional dynamic. We observe that it was not only a political issue in Spain, but also in Kosovo. While Madrid tried to use it in order to refuse the statehood of its opponent plus confirming its political stance on this matter; Pristina employed it as a window of opportunity to assure the display of its political symbology and get it fully accepted by Spain. Therefore, it represents a space where power relations are at play. The diplomatic mobilization capacity of an actor makes the difference, regardless of its political and historical background. As it can be seen, Kosovo’s full recognition at the IOC and IFs limits the impact of the Spanish sports diplomacy in this issue to a restricted application of a naming strategy, which resulted in the use of smaller font sizes or lower cases when no other alternative was possible.

Finally, considering the limitations of the research in relation to the analysis of Spanish private media, further studies are required to compare national media based in Madrid and local media from the Basque Country and Catalonia. On the other hand, this study can help to frame and understand other diplomatic conflicts at symbolic level in sporting competitions like the most recent one during the World Cup 2022; where the football federation of Iran lodged a complaint to FIFA against the United States team because its federation changed Iran’s flag on its social media to show support for the protesters in Iran (ESPN, 2022). All this would serve as a complement to this study in order to have a more comprehensive vision of the relationship between public institutions, sports federations and media in a context of sports diplomacy.