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By Tony Attwood
And to take that headline on a bit further, no fewer than eight of the 48 squads in this World Cup are made up of 50% or more payers not born in the country they now play for. Indeed, Curacao’s entire 26-man squad is made up of players born outside of Curacao. Which leads to the point that although Fifa, and the TV companies might enjoy running the World Cup, the reason for its existence is money – money for football associations and TV companies. And I guess there is a sideline in promoting nationalism also.
And yet, although the World Cup gives nationalism a chance to flourish, as the Guardian recently revealed, 23.3% of the players in the current World Cup were not actually born in the country they represent. More than that, getting on for 17% of the squads have half, or over half, of their players not born in the county they represent.
So when we talk of a particular country in the World Cup finals, what we are mostly talking about are teams made up of some players from that country whose shirt they wear, and others who have one way or another arranged to represent that country, even though they were not born there. Which perhaps seems to interfere with the whole aspect of the WC.
Of course, it is not the first time football has been observed to be mucking around with its own rules, for we used to have a thing in England called the Amateur Cup. In 1974, the FA agreed to stop classifying clubs as either professional or amateur, and so the Amateur Cup was abolished largely because of the “expenses” paid, for some of those “expenses” looked rather large, and the Inland Revenue was starting to take a particular interest.
Of course, it wasn’t the only issue facing the FA Cup, as Scottish teams started to appear on the roster, so the FA had a bit of a clean-up of all the rules.
But there hasn’t been much of a Fifa-driven attempt to clean up the issue of countries, not least because the fundamental issue underlying international competitions is that some countries have many more players to choose from than others. We might compare Andorra, with a population of under 84,000 to the nearest town to where I live – Corby in Northamptonshire. Corby play in the Midlands division of the Northern Premier League. Attendances last season varied between 297 and 867. It’s population size is fairly similar to Andorra.
So some countries simply never do very well in the WC. Andorra, for example, joined the WC in 2000. Their first win came in 2006, and in the qualifying stages for the 2022 World Cup they got two victories.
But what this hides is the fact that by the 2026 finals (rather than the qualifying competitions that Andorra compete in), around one in four players in those finals were NOT born in the country they represent.
The biggest importer is Curaçao, an island just off the coast of Venezuela. As far as I can see, none of its players were born in Curaçao – they were all born in the Netherlands. But they play for Curaçao.
Of course, you could say, well, that’s rather cute and a bit of fun, and it doesn’t matter because they never make it to the finals, but of course, the existence of Curaçao opens the door to the Democratic Republic of Congo which has 20 of its squad born in Belgium, England, France or Switzerland.
In fact, trying to find a World Cup playing country that actually has a team that is made up of players from that country is rather difficult. And actually, there are only eight squads in the current World Cup that are made up entirely of players born in the country they represent – and England is not one of them. Interestingly, one of those countries is Panama, with a population of 4,624,76.
When it comes to country of birth, 70 different countries are represented at this year’s tournament. So Italy failed to qualify, but three Italian-born players are in the finals, having qualified with another country. Looking further, we find 96 players in the current WC were born in France or a French territory or a former French colony. In fact, the rules say that a player can play for a country if they have lived in that country for five years, so nationality really isn’t part of the show.
As a result, some players can pick and choose their country. The best known is Folarin Balogun, who had to choose between the USA, Paraguay, Nigeria or England (where he grew up). And so we now have an industry of investigators looking for links between players and countries they never dreamed they were related to. You might also like to note Erling Haaland was qualified to play for England, being born in Yorkshire.
So why does Fifa encourage all this country-swapping? Mostly, it seems because countries are such different sizes, and the little countries have problems finding decent players, since their best players always move to find a better league. Even European countries vary dramatically in size. Belgium for example, is just one third of one per cent of the size of Brazil, which does seem to make the whole arrangement of the WC look a bit silly.
Then, representing the CONCACAF confederation, we find the Caribbean island of Curaçao, which is smaller than Los Angeles. They use the dual-national rule to get players from the Dutch league in their squad. But even that is not the smallest nation – that is Cape Verde, off the African coast.
So yes, it is all a bit silly, but TV seems to like it, and it gives England a chance to win a few games, so I guess we have to keep on putting up with it. But at least it is only every four years – and I do wish the various countries didn’t keep on sending players back injured with a note saying “have him ready for next time.”
