World Cup column: Multicultural World Cup has a history worth considering
Breel Embolo scored his first ever World Cup goal to get Switzerland off to a winning start in Qatar on Thursday. The Monaco forward has played for Switzerland all the way up from under-16 level and now has 60 caps for the senior team. However, Embolo was born in Yaounde, Cameroon – the country his first moment of significance on football’s greatest stage came against.
There was no goal celebration from Embolo following his 48th-minute strike, a mark of unnecessary politeness for a country he left at the age of six. The now 25-year-old departed Cameroon for France with his mother before ending up in Switzerland in time to start secondary school. Which of these countries he feels closest to, and which he ultimately decided to represent in international football, is an entirely personal choice.
Just as it is for the Williams brothers. Born in Bilbao, Inaki made his fourth appearance for Ghana against Portugal later on Thursday, 24 hours after younger sibling Nico had earned his fourth cap for Spain against Costa Rica as a substitute. Inaki had previously appeared for Spain in a 2016 friendly but having spent time in Ghana over the summer he decided his international future lay with the country of his mother’s birth.
Both Kieffer Moore and Sorba Thomas have had their England C caps – incredible achievements in themselves – dug out of the back of the wardrobe and dangled above their heads as something to be ashamed of after both had the temerity to suggest that they would be pleased if they, as full Welsh internationals, go on to beat England – their Group B rivals – when they meet next week.
The social media scorn that Moore and Thomas have received, as well as the wide-eyed amazement at the potential for the Williams brothers to face each other later in this tournament, is based on an understanding of national identity that sees it as a something fixed, singular and permanent. A want for one’s nationality to be unflinching and steadfast in a constantly changing world that is full of constantly changing personal characteristics.
Quite how that would be possible, or desirable, in a near-on universally interconnected modernity in which information, ideas and entire cultures can be transported instantly from one place to another is difficult to comprehend. You can quite plausibly go from feeling more closely related to one nation, its culture, its people and its tradition at one stage of life to feeling more attached to another at a different point. It does not feel any great stretch to suggest that you could feel equally close to two or even more at once.
133 players at this tournament are representing nations they were not born in. The stories of Inaki and Nico, Moore and Thomas, and that of Embolo will doubtless provide easy headlines over the coming days and mildly challenging pub quiz questions over the years that follow. The World Cup should be a multicultural affair, at its core it is a meeting of nations from all over the globe, designed to pit differences in tactical style and football heritage against one another.
There is also a need for a dose of reality though. It would be wonderful if the sole motivation for the parents of the Williams’ brothers to move from Ghana to the Basque region of Spain was that they were keen to experience a new culture or climate, and that the process of migrating had been straightforward, painless and pleasant. But they in fact had to cross the Sahara Desert barefoot, only arriving in Bilbao having spent time detained as illegal migrants on the southern coast of Spain.
The outcome of this family’s story, of which we are now revelling in to some degree, cannot be detached from the reality of how it came about. The brothers’ parents were victims of an unequal and unfair global economic system that forces millions to leave their homes in search of a better standard of life elsewhere. It is interesting and somewhat idiosyncratic that Inaki had the choice to switch between international sides – in a way that most players only can at club level. But the choice that his mother and father had to make was not one of preference, but one based on survival.
The European Commission suggest that by the end of 2021, 89.3 million people across the world were forcibly displaced. It can be easy to understand football, and particularly an event as all-encompassing as a World Cup, as an escape from horrific situations faced by many who migrate and the appalling treatment that follows them to their new lives and beyond. Yet, just as this tournament has exposed the reality of how international football is governed, it has also brought to the surface themes that underpin a concept such as nationality.
Footballers have no responsibility to consider these factors when deciding who to represent internationally; nationality remains an intimately personal phenomenon regardless of how it has been generated. But when commenting on how remarkable it is that a player can score against his country of birth or that two brothers can represent different nations at the same tournament, it is worth considering the circumstances that made these peculiarities possible.
