Footballers without borders: How World Cup is a window into migration patterns
Nearly 150 players will represent countries other than their nations of birth; only four sides have all home-born players, with France (37) & Africa (more than 50) providing most of the footballers fighting for glory in other teams
The French squad has a similar composition this time as well, with a dozen players in their squad being of African origin.
Equally intriguing this time is the reverse migration – the phenomenon of players born in France who will represent other countries in Qatar.
And that’s what makes the World Cup a fascinating playground for anthropologists. It is, of course, a quadrennial football festival. It, at the same time, is also a window showcasing how the world around us is moving and raises thought-provoking questions about the idea of nationality and how everything is intertwined.
There’s a Frenchman in Germany, a German in the Welsh side, which is flush with players born in England, whose most exciting young player is of Nigerian descent. There’s Africa-born talent sprinkled across the world and there are France-born players dominating the African teams’ line-ups.
Only four out of the 32 teams have all players born in their own country – Argentina, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Nearly 150 footballers from the 28 other teams will not be representing countries of their birth, an outcome of FIFA rules that allow players to switch nationalities if they have played no more than three competitive matches for a country before turning 21 or represent a country of their family’s origin.
With 37 players, France is the biggest exporter
And so, even as Didier Deschamps sees his options thinning with one injury blow after another to his squad, there will be no dearth of ‘French’ players in Qatar. With 37 players across nine countries, excluding the French team, the defending champions are also the biggest exporters of talent at this World Cup.
Thirty-three out of these 37 players will represent an African nation, pointing to the fact that a lot of French players who were deemed not good enough for Les Bleus have turned to the country of their origin, which in turn is also linked to colonial history.
Senegal will rely on nine players born in France in their push to venture into territory no other team from Africa has before – the World Cup semifinals. Tunisia has 10 French-born players in its ranks while Cameroon has eight. There’ll also be a French flavour to Portugal (Raphael Guerreiro), Germany (Armel Bella-Kotchap), Spain (Aymeric Laporte) and Qatar (Karim Boudiaf).
It’s further evidence of France being a conveyor belt of talent, especially the Parisian suburbs where most of these players hail from. Author Simon Kuper has argued that the region produces ‘more talent than Asia, Africa and North America combined.’ The reason, he wrote in a piece for ESPN in 2017, was two-fold: one, the fathers (most of them immigrants) devoting their lives to turning their kids into multimillionaire players; and two, the ecosystem.
“In these densely-packed suburbs, playgrounds are full of kids escaping their cramped apartments to kick around. Even in the smartphone era, many of them put in the 10,000 hours of practice required to become top-class without being distracted by vacations or violin lessons,” Kuper wrote.
It’s a lot like Mumbai’s maidans effortlessly producing cricketers.
The African flavour
Yet, Africa, despite being unable to put together a team that’s reached the semifinals, continues to influence teams across the world. More than 50 Africa-born or African-origin players are spread across 11 teams – excluding sides from the continent – that’ll compete in Qatar.
And while France continues to rely heavily on its immigrant population, there are eight African-origin players in Germany, who were criticized for their treatment of immigrant players four years ago. After an early exit in Russia, there were calls for the country’s football officials to resign after they blamed Mesut Ozil – the Turkish-born attacker – for the debacle. Germany’s religious leaders pointed at the public sentiment towards immigrants, which they claimed had ‘soured after the refugee influx’.
In a paper published by European Sociological Review, analyzing the multi-ethnic German football team, authors Meier, Henk Erik and Marcel Leinwather argued that the national team has often been seen as a ‘role model for the successful integration of immigrants in Germany’ after the changes to nationality laws, although ‘problems of acceptance’ remained.
Team Africa | Or as you call it France #qatar #worldcup #football #soccer #shorts #teamafrica
#worldcupqualifiers #qatarworldcup
source