The Colonised Feet that now carry the White World
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Look carefully. The so-called ‘white nations’ of world football are no longer carried only by ‘white bodies’, white histories, white churches or white bloodlines. They are carried, again and again, by the children of Africa, the Caribbean, the Arab world, Asia, Latin America – migrant neighbourhoods, refugee homes, working-class suburbs and postcolonial memory. This is the story.
By MJ Vijayan
What is the most striking question the FIFA World Cup throws at us today?
Not merely who scored, who topped the group, who moved to the next round. The deeper question is this: who is carrying the dreams of the old empires on their feet?
Look at France.
Look at England.
Look at Belgium, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal, the United States and Canada.
Look carefully, not with the lazy eye of nationalism, but with the historical eye of politics. The so-called ‘white nations’ of world football are no longer carried only by ‘white bodies’, white histories, white churches or white bloodlines. They are carried, again and again, by the children of Africa, the Caribbean, the Arab world, Asia, Latin America – migrant neighbourhoods, refugee homes, working-class suburbs and postcolonial memory.
That the global North is being carried on its feet by the global South is not a small footnote to football.
This is the story.
France is the most striking example. Kylian Mbappé, born in Paris, with Cameroonian and Algerian roots, is not an exception in the French team. He is the centre of a wider truth.
Around him stand names like Ousmane Dembélé, Aurélien Tchouaméni, N’Golo Kanté, Mike Maignan, William Saliba, Ibrahima Konaté, Jules Koundé, Dayot Upamecano, Michael Olise, Rayan Cherki, Bradley Barcola, Marcus Thuram, Désiré Doué and others. They are French. They are also children of histories that France once ruled, exploited, extracted from, policed, racialised and called “outside”.
Now those “outsiders” are France’s centre.
The old empire wanted labour without equality, colonies without citizenship, resources without memory, and culture without justice. Football has staged a brutal reversal. The children of the colonised now sing the Marseillaise, wear the French blue, win the trophies, take the penalties, absorb the racist abuse, and still rescue the republic from its own narrow imagination of itself.
The irony is not symbolic. It is historic.
England too is no longer explainable through the mythology of ‘island purity’. Its footballing hope now runs through Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham, Marcus Rashford, Eberechi Eze, Kobbie Mainoo, Noni Madueke, Marc Guéhi, Ezri Konsa, Ivan Toney, Djed Spence and others. Some are of African or Caribbean descent. Some come from immigrant families. Some carry names and histories that would have once been told to remain at the margins of ‘Englishness’.
Yet today, without them, England is not a World Cup contender. It is just nostalgia in a white shirt.
And then there is the question of faith. Europe, which still imagines itself as a Christian civilisational space, now finds its footballing future deeply shaped by Muslim, migrant and minority histories. Spain’s Lamine Yamal, born in Catalonia to a Moroccan father and an Equatorial Guinean mother, is one of the most dazzling young talents in world football. His very presence unsettles the old categories.
Is he Spanish?
Yes.
Is he African in lineage?
Yes.
Is he a child of migrant struggle?
Yes.
Must he choose only one history?
No.
That is precisely what football is teaching Europe: identity is not a prison. It is a river that cannot be dammed.
Djed Spence becoming a Muslim representative in the England side is not merely a sports trivia point. It is a political image. A Muslim player in the national team of a country where Islamophobia has been normalised by tabloids, politicians and street racism. A player of minority background wearing the shirt of a country still struggling to admit what empire did to the world.
This is not token diversity.
This is the new demographic truth breaking through the old national lie.
Germany has its own version of this story. Antonio Rüdiger, Jamal Musiala, Malick Thiaw, Karim Adeyemi in earlier squads, and now Deniz Undav, the German-born player of Kurdish Yazidi heritage, show that Germany’s footballing body is not the old ‘Aryan fantasy’ of its darkest past.
Undav’s story is particularly moving. A son of a persecuted Yazidi refugee family, he plays for Germany and becomes a symbol of dignity for a stateless and wounded people. This is football doing what parliaments often refuse to do: making the invisible visible.
Belgium’s story is equally powerful. Jérémy Doku, Romelu Lukaku, Amadou Onana, Dodi Lukebakio, Youri Tielemans and others represent a country whose wealth was historically tied to the violent extraction of Congo and Africa. Today, Belgium’s footballing pride is inseparable from African-origin players. The descendants of those who were once colonised or racialised now carry the flag of the country that once profited from colonial brutality.
History has a strange left foot.
The Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Portugal too are no longer culturally sealed European teams. They are teams of migration, empire, labour and refuge. Virgil van Dijk, Cody Gakpo, Xavi Simons, Denzel Dumfries, Manuel Akanji, Breel Embolo, Alexander Isak, Rafael Leão, Nuno Mendes, Danilo Pereira and many others are reminders that Europe’s footballing quality is built not by ethnic purity but by pluralism.
North America tells the same story in a different grammar.
The United States team is not a white American story. It is Christian Pulisic, yes, but also Tim Weah, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams, Folarin Balogun, Haji Wright, Malik Tillman, Sergiño Dest, Antonee Robinson, Chris Richards, Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson, Auston Trusty, Ricardo Pepi and Alejandro Zendejas.
It is Black America, African migration, Caribbean routes, Latino histories, mixed families and the children of movement. In a country where racism remains structural and police violence remains political, the national team quietly displays what the republic refuses to fully become. In a nutshell, the football team of the USA at the FIFA World Cup, negates everything that Donald Trump and rusted Republican politics stand for. Literally getting beaten on the grass.
Canada too is unimaginable without the men with curls! The first country team to advance to the round of 16 in the 2026 FIFA WC, Canada is nothing without Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David, Ismaël Koné, Tajon Buchanan, Moïse Bombito, Ali Ahmed, Cyle Larin, Tani Oluwaseyi, Promise David and others. Here is a country whose footballing rise is powered by Black, Caribbean, African and migrant-origin players. The new Canada on the pitch is far ahead of the old Canada of settler innocence.
This is why football is political and is the most political sport on the map.
Not because players must issue manifestos, but because their bodies already carry history. Every sprint by Mbappé, every dribble by Yamal, every tackle by Rüdiger, every run by Saka, every burst by Doku, every save by Maignan, cheered by nationalist fans, is also a commentary on race, empire, conquests, belonging and nationhood.
It is a poetry against colonisation, written with blood and sweat.
The Far Right understands this. That is why it attacks these players the moment they miss a penalty. They are French when they score, African or Arab when they miss. English when they win, immigrant when they fail. Belgian when they dribble, Congolese when they demand respect. The racist mind wants minority bodies to produce national glory without claiming national equality.
But football is defeating that bargain. The colonised are not merely asking for entry anymore. Their children are carrying the keys. They are not guests in Europe’s house. They are rebuilding the house. They are not symbols of charity. They are makers of national pride.
They are not evidence of decline, as racists claim. They are proof that pluralism works.
This World Cup is therefore not just a globalised, glamourised tournament. It is a people’s census of modern history; standing tall against the ignorance of settler colonialism. It tells us that no nation is pure, no flag is innocent, no anthem belongs to one race, and no empire can forever control the descendants of those it once tried to rule.
Centuries after colonialism, the ball has rolled back. The children of the colonies, the children of migrants, the children of Muslims, Africans, Arabs, Asians, Caribbeans and refugees are now the messengers of possibility for the very countries that once treated them as inferior.
And they are not whispering. They are scoring and roaring; winning hearts for who they are.
MJ Vijayan, a football fanatic, is a socio-political analyst and writer, based in New Delhi.