Who you rooting for? World Cup, Migration, Nationalism and Racism
We are now almost midway through the Round of 32 of the FIFA World Cup being held in Mexico, Canada, and the USA. From the kick off on June 11, millions of football fans all over the globe have been rooting for their favorite teams. In fact, this World Cup is perhaps the most watched sporting event ever. Who are you rooting for?
As for me, I started off rooting for Curacao and Haiti. Following their elimination after the Group stage, my support shifted to the African teams - all nine of them that made it to the knockout stage. But I must confess that all of that is based on my propensity to be on the side of the underdog. It’s an emotional thing, siding with the weak.
Leveling of the playing field:
However, the matches played so far have shown that there is no “weak” team in this World Cup featuring a record 48 teams. This might be the clearest indication that the “beautiful game” has reached a level all over the world that has virtually eliminated the dominance of the usual powerhouses such as Brazil, Germany and Italy. Brazil was held to a draw by Morocco in the Group stage, Germany was beaten by Ecuador at the same stage and Italy didn’t even qualify. Between them, the three countries have won the World Cup 12 times.
So, what is responsible for this leveling of the playing field in terms of quality and results? The answer is summed up in one word: Africa.
The roster sheets of top-tier European nations—most notably France, England, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain and Germany—offer a profound visual representation of how African migration (or should I say displacement?), colonialism, and globalization are actively rewriting the definition of the modern nation-state.
The Changing Face of Europe:
A significant percentage of players representing European giants are of African descent. For instance, the French national team’s core is heavily comprised of players whose families trace their roots back to Algeria, Senegal, Cameroon, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The numbers speak volumes. Of the 26 players representing France, 21 of them are of African descent. For England it is 15, while The Netherlands has 14. Belgium has 9 members of its squad with African ancestry and Germany has the same number. For the USA, the number is 12, all of them out of the maximum 26.
The Post-Colonial Paradox:
This demographic reality forces an ongoing conversation on sports, migration, nationality, and colonialism. On the one hand, these teams are celebrated as a triumph of multicultural inclusiveness — proof that a modern nation can be bound together by shared values and citizenship rather than by ethnic uniformity.
Conditional Belonging:
On the other hand, this inclusiveness is often starkly fragile, with racism often rearing its ugly, bigoted head at every twist and turn. As sociologists frequently note, minority players are often praised as "sons of the republic" when they score winning goals, but are swiftly subjected to xenophobic and racist chants and scapegoating by ethno-nationalist, white supremacist factions when the team loses.
This was the case with German defender, Jonathan Tah after he missed the sudden death penalty that resulted in Germany being eliminated in the Round of 32. Tah was bombarded with hate messages, some of them asking him to “leave our country!”
In his seminal work, sociologist Michael Billig coined the term "banal nationalism" to describe the everyday, unnoticed representations of nationhood—such as flags on public buildings or the casual use of the word "us" in national weather forecasts. Mega-sporting events like the World Cup turn banal nationalism into an acute, hyper-visible phenomenon.
"International sport is perhaps the most powerful engine for the continuous reproduction of banal nationalism, turning abstract geopolitical borders into deeply felt emotional realities,” Billig wrote.
Modern national teams frequently become flashpoints for internal cultural debates regarding immigration, race, and collective identity. The multicultural compositions of heavyweights like France, England, The Netherlands or Germany often serve as a battleground between progressive visions of pluralistic nationhood and conservative, right-wing, ethno-nationalist anxieties. When a team wins, their diversity is celebrated as proof of a successful, modern state; but when they lose, those same minority players are frequently targeted, revealing the fragile conditional nature of national belonging in the modern era.
The modern sporting spectacle requires an intricate dance between hyper-local state pride and borderless global capitalism. This tension manifests heavily in the phenomenon of "sportswashing," where regimes utilize the pristine prestige of global sports to clean up their international reputations, distract from human rights records, and buy diplomatic goodwill through sponsorship or event acquisition.
The intersection of sports, politics and nationalism therefore requires that we reexamine what we understand by “healthy competition.”
The current matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup prove that the separation of sports from politics is not only impossible but fundamentally misinterprets why these games matter so much. The stadium has become a theater where the grand issues of our world — power, sovereignty, belonging, and justice — are reduced to a human scale. And as long as humanity divides itself into nations, the playing field will remain a mirror of global politics, reflecting both the highest aspirations of international unity and the enduring, competitive fires of crass nationalism.