Metaphors of the European Football Championship(Illustrated by Materials about the German National Team)

The article analyzes metaphoric space of football narrative of European Football Championship 2024 using materials about one of the participants – the German national team – as illustration. Representativeness and validity of the results is provided by a wide range of authentic resources – from live match tickers to fans’ chat communication. The research determines the role of metaphor in the narrative, distinguishes metaphoric patterns reflecting realia connected with UEFA Euro-2024. Reciprocal projection of metaphoric transformations is considered, which, as stated, consists in using sports events to describe events, facts, phenomena that refer to other than sport conceptual zones. The article emphasizes potential of sports discourse for creating metaphoric images for UEFA Euro-2024 at the expense of its own resources with the help of conceptual integration of two spheres relating to sport (for example, football and cycling, football and track-and-field athletics). Prospects for further research are specified, one of them being comparing metaphoric representations of a concept in different languages. Contrastive studies can help reveal zones of similarity and difference in metaphoric conceptualization by speakers of the languages being analyzed, expose peculiarities of developing football communication in national views of the world.