Migration and identity define this World Cup

Players born in one country and representing another highlight football's ability to transcend politics

- Shrenik Avlani

The phrase “Football Unites the World” is embroidered on the armband of team captains at this summer's FIFA World Cup.

The phrase “Football Unites the World” is embroidered on the armband of team captains at this summer's FIFA World Cup. Before the football even kicked off, quite a few would have frowned at the irony of the phrase. After all, a top African referee from Somalia, after he landed in the US, was denied entry by the host nation. Footballers were held back for hours for questioning at American airports. Canada denied visas to a couple of players. The Iranian football team, because of the war waged by the US and Israel, was forced to shift its base to Mexico. Fans from several participating nations, mostly from Africa, face President Donald Trump’s travel bans.

Despite the polarised times we live in, once footballers took the field and the action kicked off, the multicultural and diverse nature of the sport has been on full display at each and every game.

In Philadelphia, the Manchester-born Zidane Iqbal, named after the French football legend Zinedine Zidane by his Pakistani father and Iraqi mother, turned out in the whites of Iraq on 22 June against a French team whose creative heart is the London-born Michael Olise, who picked France over England for his international career.

A few hundred miles further east, at the New York New Jersey Stadium, the superstar Erling Haaland, born in England's Leeds, was scoring goals for Norway against Senegal’s Edouard Mendy, who is a French citizen by birth but plays football for Senegal. The tournament's opening goal scored by Mexico’s Julián Quiñones was already an apt statement of this diversity: Quiñones is a Colombian by birth and gained Mexican citizenship by naturalisation in 2023.