FIFA World Cup thrives on diaspora players

How global migration changed international soccer

ADAM MINTER

Folarin Balogun, star striker for the United States Men’s National Team, helped to lead his country into the World Cup knockout rounds. He could just as easily have been trying to knock them out.

Born in New York to Nigerian parents and raised in England, he was eligible to represent three nations. He’s not the only one. Twelve additional members of the 26-man U.S. roster were also eligible to represent other countries.

And the U.S. is far from unique. Nearly one-quarter of the players at this World Cup represent a country other than the one in which they were born, up from roughly 9% in 2006.

At first glance, this “diaspora World Cup” can feel messy. But it’s hardly a flaw. It reflects a world in which national communities exist beyond their borders. Rather than resist that reality, FIFA has wisely adapted to it.

For decades, international soccer players changed countries with relative ease. That changed beginning in the 1960s when FIFA rewrote the rules so that playing in an official game for one national team — even a youth national team — would bind a player to a country.

By the late 20th century, however, those rules increasingly clashed with demographic reality. Large diasporas linked countries across continents. Dual citizenship became more common and millions of people developed meaningful ties to more than one nation.

Consider Algeria, a country key to FIFA’s evolution. For decades, children of the Algerian diaspora living in France had access to the country’s elite soccer academies. Yet once these players joined France’s youth national teams, their international futures were determined before they were adults.

If they later fell short of France’s senior squad, they could not switch to Algeria even though many had deep family ties to it.

The loss wasn’t just to Algeria and other diasporas. International soccer was less competitive because FIFA’s rules led many dual-nationality stars to represent a handful of traditional soccer powers rather than a wide range of countries.

The regulations had been designed to protect the integrity of national teams, but increasingly they were undermining it by preventing countries from drawing upon overseas communities. Over the last two decades, in large part due to lobbying from Algeria, FIFA gradually loosened those restrictions.

Players can now switch national allegiances under certain circumstances, even after appearing for a youth national team or making limited appearances for a senior one (subject to citizenship, which countries typically grant to players they recruit).

Of course, a player born in one country who chooses to represent another doesn’t fit everyone’s notion of what a national team should be — and the World Cup is supposed to pit nation against nation.

But that raises a question: What, precisely, constitutes a nation in 2026? Cape Verde, perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2026 World Cup, gives us an answer. The tiny island nation of 530,000 people has already played Spain and Uruguay to shocking draws.

And the team did it by drawing upon a Verdean diaspora that extends around the world and may total as many as 1.5 million people.

This global community, like many others, isn’t passive. Verdeans abroad elect six designated members of the country’s 72-member parliament. Their remittances are a key pillar of the national economy. Perhaps most importantly, they remain emotionally connected to home.

In Massachusetts, where 70,000 Cape Verdeans reside, celebrations of the team’s World Cup performance have spilled into the streets and public squares.

Any complaints about half of the roster being foreign-born should consider that the players are recruited from the same diaspora that remains tied to their island home. The fact that they’ve played Spain and Uruguay to stunning draws isn’t evidence of a less authentic World Cup.

To be sure, Cape Verde’s tale is unusually dramatic and successful. But in relying heavily upon a diaspora, it’s far from unique. Curacao is making its first World Cup appearance and Haiti returns for the first time in over 50 years. In both cases, they do so with rosters built across borders.

It’s not just smaller, post-colonial nations that benefit. Without English-raised Balogun, the American team would still be competitive, but its qualification for the knockout rounds after two matches would have been less likely.

FIFA, to its credit, has not just embraced this more fluid understanding of national identity. It’s structured the World Cup around it. The tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams this year, creating space for more countries and for the transnational communities that define many of them (all the while, ensuring more revenue for FIFA).

This globalized approach to a World Cup is neither a loophole nor a bug in the system. It’s how FIFA ensures its signature tournament resembles the world it claims to represent.

Bloomberg