1. Football and national pride

In 2026, the US put on a show for the world watching. The halftime performance during the final between Spain and Argentina was reminiscent of the NFL Super Bowl halftime performance in its pomp and glamour. Justin Bieber performed, Tom Cruise spoke of football as a unifying language, and Madonna rode alongside Brazilian legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, a meeting of very different worlds. As much as a nation wants to win, a victory means nothing without fans; football fans express national identity on behalf of their football team. Erling Haaland led the famous “Viking Row” celebration as fans followed suit after Norway edged out favorites Brazil by two goals to one. Norway rowed their way to the quarterfinals, forcing Brazil to samba out of the tournament. England, the Three Lions, only roared until the semi-finals.

The particular type of football played also represents a country, in terms of both its individual players and collective style.Footnote ⁴ The Dutch, for example, have noted “total soccer” as their unique contribution to global football.Footnote ⁵

Aside from fostering national pride, football has also provided an impetus for nationalist movements challenging colonial rule. Egypt’s qualification for the World Cup in 1934 “underpinned their aspirations for national independence.”Footnote ⁶ In Algerian stadiums, Algerians could voice their rejection of French colonialism. Since colonialism has formally ended, resulting in independent nation-states, individuals in the world of football today have to make difficult decisions on which country to represent due to FIFA regulations that allow players to represent a country other than their birthplace. In some cases, players represent either a former colony or a former ruler of that colony. In Africa, white expatriate coaches from countries such as France are held in higher regard compared to Black football managers. This valorization of European football coaches is an outcome of football having been introduced to Africa by European colonial powers.Footnote ⁷ Clubs in Europe have a similar appeal. For African footballers, European clubs remain the “preferred destination.”Footnote ⁸

This article asks what it means to be a nation in the world of football within the post-colonial context. I explore public perceptions toward the French men’s football multiethnic team since 1998, when multicultural fever surrounded France’s first-ever World Cup win, to illustrate contestations over who is deemed an authentic citizen of a nation. I argue that national identity can transcend borders for both footballers and fans alike, even if expressions of national identity demonstrate some affinity to a former colonial empire. I also explore the phenomenon of French-born players who decide to play for another country (such as a former colony), further signifying the fluidity of national identity whereby one feels a sense of belonging to more than one country. It is this fluidity in national identity that shows how multiculturalism can be a force for good in an age of ethnonationalism.

2. Football nations beyond borders

Benedict Anderson wrote of nations as imagined political communities.Footnote ⁹ Members of these nations have a shared identity despite people in those nations probably never having met one another. Duke and Crolley define the nation as “a defined territory, involving common sentiments and a common identity shared by its members: people feel themselves to be part of a nation.”Footnote ¹⁰ Sports bring imagined communities to life.Footnote ¹¹ Fans at home and in the stadium hold up their national flags in unison as they watch their country play in the World Cup.

Very rarely is a national football team today ethnically homogenous. Mudde and Roulier provide a typology of national teams.Footnote ¹² First, ethnic teams consist of players born in the country and whose parents belong to an ethnic group of that country. The type of citizenship associated with ethnic teams may be described as “thick,” where athletes and their parents were born in the same country.Footnote ¹³ Second, civic teams consist of players born in the country that they represent, but their parents do not belong to the nation’s constitutive groups.Footnote ¹⁴ The third type, a diaspora team, refers to players who are not born or raised in the country they play for but have blood ties to that country. Kalidou Koulibaly, for example, was born in France but captains the Senegal national team. French-born Jordan Ayew similarly captains Ghana’s team. Due to colonial histories, it is expected that there will be French-born footballers with some ties to countries in Africa. African teams would be eager to “recapture the diaspora.”Footnote ¹⁵ Finally, it is common for national teams (such as Qatar) to have naturalized players, known as cosmopolitan teams.Footnote ¹⁶ These players are not born in that country and have no ethnic ties to that country. A player is eligible to play for a country if they have lived in that country for 5 years or have a parent or grandparent born there.Footnote ¹⁷ FIFA allows for different types of identities to be expressed, be it ethnic or civic.Footnote ¹⁸ Even individuals with no relationship to a country at all can represent that country through naturalization. But contestations over who is a “true” citizen are often expressed by politicians and, to some extent, individuals within football associations.

3. France as a racialized nation

France, like other European countries, is known for having a team of both local and foreign-born players. The local players may have immigrant parents. When France won the World Cup for the first time in 1998, players, whether Black, White, or Arab, united as one to bring glory to the host nation. Most French players at that time were born and raised in France. Marcel Desailly was born in Ghana. Since then, when France does well in football, the multicultural makeup of the team is celebrated. However, race and loyalty have been used as a form of critique against this same multiculturalism. The French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1996 labelled non-white footballers as “fake Frenchman” who did not sing the national anthem.Footnote ¹⁹ In the year 2000, 36 percent of French people surveyed “agreed entirely or almost entirely” that there were too many players of foreign origin playing for their country.Footnote ²⁰

The disintegration emanating from the French team in 2010 when they failed to progress out of the World Cup group stages was attributed by some to Black or Muslim players, including Franck Ribéry.Footnote ²¹ The experiences of players of color show that “nationalism is now often central to racist ideologies and discourses.”Footnote ²² Right-wing politicians such as Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, alleged that France failed in 2010 because of its diversity.Footnote ²³ Underperformance from the French team is commonly attributed to the team being too “African” or “multicultural.”Footnote ²⁴ When France lost to Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final, Mbappé and Kinglsey Coman were racially abused on social media.Footnote ²⁵ Minority players are racially abused when the team does poorly but valued when the team does well.Footnote ²⁶ In 2011, there was controversy within the French Football Federation itself when former French coach Laurent Blanc allegedly supported quotas to limit how many non-white binational footballers could play for the country’s youth teams, though he was cleared of any wrongdoing.Footnote ²⁷ A French independent newspaper also alleged that top management wanted to limit non-white youngsters as young as 12 or 13 from becoming eventual national players.Footnote ²⁸

The incidents above demonstrate the lingering effects of colonialism whereby race is used to judge someone’s moral value and ability to be French. Yet, it is clear that non-White players in the French team are part and parcel of the team’s success. The presence of African-born or players of African heritage in the French national team symbolizes France’s ability to tap into a talent pool of players who descend from former colonies.Footnote ²⁹ These players are proud to represent France, notwithstanding racist scrutiny and the fact that the country was a former colonial empire. At the end of the day, if France wins, everyone wins, regardless of ethnic origin. Patrick Viera, Senegalese-born, played for a French team that reached the 2006 World Cup final. The French colonial link goes both ways, since there are French-born players who are selected to play for former French colonies, symbolizing the phenomenon of smaller football nations reversing “the main direction of a country’s preceding migratory movements of football players.”Footnote ³⁰ These players may still feel an affinity to France. The French-born Moroccan player Sofiane Boufal expressed how agonizing it was to decide between playing for France and Morocco. He remarked that “I will never forget what France has given me…it was like having to choose between my mother and my father.”Footnote ³¹

4. Football’s anti-racist message

We can celebrate a team’s multicultural makeup despite its links to colonialism, a system of rule which sought to civilize natives and was thus an opponent of multiculturalism by definition. African football fans have no problem doing so. During the World Cup final in 2018, football fans across Africa viewed France, a former colonial empire, as their last chance for glory, since fifteen of its players had lineages from Africa.Footnote ³² Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele’s mother is of Mauritanian and Senegalese descent. Paul Pogba has Guinean parents while Nabil Fekir has Algerian parents. US-based comedian Trevor Noah, himself born in South Africa, joked that Africa won the World Cup in 2018.Footnote ³³ While there may be some truth to that joke, since many players have African heritage, collapsing these players into an African identity, and not acknowledging that they themselves are proud to play for France, risks denying the “multiplicity of identity” of these players.Footnote ³⁴ The French team were proud winners in 2018, even as they celebrated their respective ancestries. Similarly, players such as Boufal show that playing for a country other than your birthplace, France, does not simply mean disavowing yourself from where you were born. National identity is fluid, and such fluidity manifests in French players of African origin or French-born players representing Africa.

The numbers show that it is common for players to play for a country they were not born in. At the 2014 World Cup, 25 French-born players played for other countries such as Algeria.Footnote ³⁵ At the 2018 World Cup, 82 players were born in countries different from the ones they were representing.Footnote ³⁶ Fifty players were born in France. Some played for Tunisia, Morocco, and Senegal, former French colonies. At the 2026 men’s World Cup, 99 players were born in France; only 23 of them played for France.Footnote ³⁷ Football upends notions of what it means to be a nation, demonstrating that identity is borderless. When a player plays for a particular country, it does not mean they do not feel sentiment for other countries linked to their family’s history. When Mesut Özil scored for Germany against Turkey in a UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying match, he did not celebrate. He had played for Germany since he was 17. This is why he complained about being labelled a “German Turk.”Footnote ³⁸

The ethnic landscape of national football teams serves as a much-needed antidote to ethnonationalist sentiment fostered by authoritarian populism. Ideally, football tells us that it does not matter where you come from. What matters is whether you are willing to contribute to a country’s success. It is possible to celebrate multiculturalism, even if it is partly a by-product of migratory processes linked to colonial histories. Though multiculturalism in the French football team cannot single-handedly challenge far-right politics in the country or around the world, it can continue to be an advocate against the racialization of national identity.