Representation of Religious Fact in Football Phenomenon

The present article discusses the question of how the phenomenon of football can manifest "religious fact" through its presence and competitive and communicative forms in the club or national/world arenas. This phenomenon, while 22 people in a green rectangle compete for a trophy or medal, displays a range of monetary, commercial, aesthetic, artistic, cultural, moral, and religious exchanges. In the meantime, football becomes a complex of players, fans, and club owners, which reveals tendencies; behaviors; cultural, religious, and semantic identities. In this article, with the phenomenological-interpretive method and the semiotic-analytical technique, the football phenomenon is discussed as one of the most important sports that can represent the actions and signs of religious fact. First, the theoretical basis and general approaches to this phenomenon are examined, and then its features and functions are organized under the headings, dramatic dimensions, unpredictability, identity giving, media power, occasion-ritual, magical and spiritual, and in the form of thanksgiving and happiness prostrations. As a result of this study, aimed at understanding the religious fact in football, the malleability and fluidity of this phenomenon in the face of multiple cultures is the most important social field to use symbolic language and to represent the religious fact in the form of gestures and rituals individually and in groups.