I am immigrant when we win
Countries aiming for football success should follow Morocco’s lead: embrace diaspora talent, invest in domestic development, and celebrate immigrant identity - changing world football for good.
When Lamine Yamal takes the pitch for Spain, his decision to represent his birth country over his father’s homeland of Morocco is treated as a natural and obvious progression. Yet when the Moroccan Football Federation (FRMF) aggressively recruits footballing elites born in Paris, Madrid, or Rotterdam, critics lament the death of the “traditional national team.”
But what, exactly, do they mean by that? In fact, European powerhouses have often relied on immigrants from the imperial periphery to sustain their dominance. France’s legendary 1998 World Cup-winning squad was celebrated under the slogan “Blac-Blanc-Beur” (Black, White, Arab).
This was supposedly the team that had “proved” that immigrants and their children could integrate into the republic. Icons like Zinedine Zidane were born in Marseille to Algerian parents, while linchpins like Marcel Desailly and Patrick Vieira were born in Ghana and Senegal, respectively. Many of them were molded by French youth academies.
When multi-ethnic teams win, they are celebrated as positive examples. But when they lose, their loyalty is put on trial by the media. As former World Cup winner and German international of Turkish descent Mesut Özil stated: “I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose.” If you had to make the choice, would you prefer a team where you’d be a hero, win or lose, or one where a bad game meant your identity was suspect?
The key difference is that now these players have a choice. By adopting an approach similar to a tech start-up, rising football nations have made themselves much more attractive destinations for young diaspora players. Combined with relaxed FIFA eligibility rules, the efforts these nations put into diaspora recruitment mean that, instead of waiting 15 years for new generations of talent, they can acquire players trained at enormous expense in Europe’s finest youth systems.
This aggressive recruitment strategy has flattened the international landscape, allowing African powers like Morocco, Algeria, and Senegal to rapidly multiply their depth. Simultaneously, smaller nations are using the blueprint to skip developmental stages entirely; both Cape Verde and Curaçao heavily relied on foreign-born talent for historic World Cup debuts, with the Curaçao roster composed of twenty-six foreign players.
As the sociologist Gijsbert Oonk has observed, European powerhouses are inadvertently fueling their own competition: France, for instance, was the main incubator for Morocco’s historical rise. (Some Moroccan players come from Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but the majority are products of the French club and academy systems.)
In this sense, diaspora team-building represents an inversion of the traditional logic of colonization. Take Morocco, the first African country to ever go to the semi-finals of the World Cup. Morocco’s success, up to and including the Atlas Lions’ quarterfinal clash with France today, was driven by sourcing stars from abroad like the Madrid-born Achraf Hakimi or the Dutch-born Sofyan Amrabat.
However, aggressive international recruitment carries an obvious risk: domestic atrophy. If home-grown players see the starting eleven permanently occupied by European-raised stars, the incentive structure for local academies quickly shifts. Why toil in Casablanca if the pathway to the national team requires a European passport?
Just as nations with natural resources must avoid the “resource curse,” where quick profits replace long-term economic development, nations that import talent need to avoid the “recruitment trap,” relying permanently on imported stars to paper over a subpar football development system. They must use diaspora talent to catalyze domestic growth, funding, and interest. In fact, Morocco itself plowed the winnings from the 2022 World Cup back into the Mohammed VI Football Academy.
Already, these efforts have borne fruit in the form of Azzedine Ounahi, who recently scored a brace in the Atlas Lions’ victory over Canada. Smart countries, both large and small, should study Morocco’s example instead of casting doubt on the legitimacy of Morocco’s talent recruitment strategy.
Ultimately, the globalization of international football is not ruining the sport; it is flattening the playing field. Both France and Morocco, as they head into their quarterfinal clash, are no longer representatives of different footballing worlds but rather mirrors to each other of the beautiful game.
 | A guest post by
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