Every four years we’re told the FIFA World Cup is the ultimate competition between nations. Commentators talk about national pride and countries battling for global supremacy. In reality, these teams have very little connection to the countries whose names appear on the jerseys.
According to The Observer in the UK, nearly one-quarter of players in the 2026 World Cup were born outside the country they represent. More than 72% play professionally outside the country they represent. In some cases, entire national teams are made up largely of players who were born, raised, trained, and developed somewhere else.
A further cross-border feature of this World Cup is that more than 72% of players appear for a club outside the country of their national team, up from 68% last time, and compared with only 10% at the 1978 World Cup, when nearly half the number were Scots based in England. Around one in seven players at this tournament are foreigners in English league football.
The Observer
Curaçao’s team is mostly composed of players born in the Netherlands. Morocco’s team has numerous members born in Europe. France appears to be the talent factory that supplies dozens of French-born players that represent other nations.
It’s all apparently within the rules. All you need is a smidgen of citizenship, ethnic connection, or residency to legally play for that country. If most players don’t live in the country they represent and earn their living somewhere else, what exactly makes these national teams national?
I have the exact same problem with the Olympics. The entire premise of international competition is nationalism. It is the foundation of the Olympics. The reason people care whether one country beats another is because the athletes are supposedly representing their nations. Remove national identity and the competition becomes just another sporting event.
In the Olympics, medals are tracked by country and when someone wins gold “their” country’s national anthem is played. Television networks frame results in terms of national success and national failure. The World Cup operates in exactly the same manner.
Both events rely on athletes whose connections to the countries they represent are tenuous at best. Some athletes compete for countries where they have never lived and others acquire citizenship through ancestry and residency rules. International sporting federations and Olympic rules allow for this, and many athletes take advantage of the opportunity. I don’t fault the athletes. They just want to compete.
It no longer makes sense to pretend that these games are contests between nations. The original concept of international competition was straightforward. Without nationalism, there is no reason to organize teams by country at all. If the players are global free agents connected to nations through flexible eligibility rules, then the entire structure is arbitrary. Just create teams with no national affiliation.
It’s all silly, stupid, and fake.
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