The changed face of European football, By Yusuf Bangura

Something remarkable is happening in European football, which requires scholarly attention, especially by those working on multiculturalism, social integration, far right populist movements, and North-South relations. Football is too important to working and young people for scholars to ignore it or treat it as a diversion or just pastime and a sport for unruly fans.

European teams that seem to be doing well in international tournaments are increasingly becoming less white, with players of African descent accounting for a large share of the non-white players.

Even as late as the closing decade of the twentieth century, watching a Euros tournament in which teams fielded black players was rare. A few countries with large black immigrant populations, such as England and France, would select two or three players of colour. Having a team in which more than half of the players were black was a taboo and strange, even to enthusiastic black fans.

France, under its 1998 World Cup coach, Aimé Jacquet, led the way in the selection of a large number of non-white players when it fielded five players of African descent (about half of the team) in the final of that tournament. It went on to win it, beating Brazil, the most successful team in the tournament’s history.

That victory and the multiracial character of the team were big talking points during and after the tournament. An estimated one million fans of various skin colours and ethnic origins celebrated the historic event at the Champs -Élysées. But the leader of the far right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, denounced the team and the victory, claiming that it was not a true French team, and referred to the black players as unworthy.

The current French coach, Didier Deschamps, played as a defensive midfielder in that World Cup winning team. As a coach, he has courageously ignored the racist protestations of the far right and advanced Jacquet’s multicultural football agenda.

There were six players of African descent in Deschamp’s 2018 World Cup team, which also won the tournament. And watching France play in this 2024 Euros, you would be forgiven to believe that France is an African country: nine of the eleven players Deschamps fielded to beat Portugal in the quarter finals are of African descent.

France’s success in fielding black players to win international football tournaments opened the floodgates for black players to dominate team selections or have a high level of representation in European teams.

For a very long time, England fielded only two or three black players in its national team. Even during the 2020 Euros (played in 2021), Gareth Southgate, a very conservative coach, did not field more than three black players at any given time in England’s matches, until the tail end of the match against Italy in the final, which they lost on penalties. The England team in the 2024 Euros is now a mosaic of colours. Five of the starting eleven players for the quarter finals match against Switzerland have ancestral links with Africa; and of the five players who came on as subs, four have an African lineage.

Many other countries have also followed France’s lead, chief among which is the Netherlands – the second most diverse team in the 2024 Euros after France. Seven of the eleven players that started the Netherlands match against Turkey have an African lineage and one an Indonesian ancestry. Germany, Austria and Switzerland have also recognised the value of fielding non-white players — black players are strongly represented in their 2024 Euros teams.

Remarkably, more than 50 per cent (23 out of 44) of the starting lineup of players for the quarter finals of the four teams that have qualified for the semi finals of the 2024 Euros (France, the Netherlands, England and Spain) to be played on Tuesday and Wednesday have African ancestry.

France had nine players with African links in its starting lineup against Portugal; Netherlands, seven, in its match against Turkey; England, five, when it locked horns with Switzerland; and Spain, two, when it dispatched Germany in what may be regarded as the best match of the tournament so far. The two black Spanish players (Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams) are easily Spain’s most exciting players in the tournament.

The transformation of the national football team of Switzerland — a country with no colonial history — is remarkable. Half of its 26 member squad consists of players with Nigerian, Ghanaian, Senegalese, Cameroonian, Latin American, Albanian and Turkish ancestries, who were either born in the country or migrated there at a very early age.

The forthcoming semi finals in which more than half of the players will have African ancestry, would surely resemble an AFCON (African Cup of Nations) tournament. This is unprecedented. Will it generate a backlash from those with a nativist or narrow view of European heritage, or spur countries that want to excel in international football tournaments to seek out and give opportunities to players of African descent?

Unfortunately, most West European national football teams are becoming highly diverse at a time when nativist, anti-foreign, far right parties are making big gains in European elections. For many of the players that have excelled in the sport, football offers, perhaps, one of the few paths to live decent lives and escape from the poverty traps of the banlieues or inner cities. Will the football prowess of these players and the happiness they bring to their countries feed into the attitudes of voters and the policies of centre and left parties to keep the regressive and alienating nativist agenda at bay?

One football powerhouse nation that has remained an outlier in this transformation is Italy. Only a few players of African descent have played for Italy in its football history: Fabio Riverani (the first black player to be selected and played from 2001-2006); Angelo Ogbonna, who has Nigerian roots, and played for Italy from 2012-2016; and the highly talented, charismatic and unpredictable Mario Balotelli, with Ghanaian roots, who terrorised defenders for a number of top European clubs and the Italian national team between 2010 and 2018. The Italian team for Euros 2024 has no black player.

The argument that the absence of black players in Italy’s team is because of its lack of a colonial history is dubious. Under its fascist dictator, Mussolini, Italy tried to annex Ethiopia, as well as present day Eritrea and Somaliland, but lost all three territories when it was defeated in the Second World War. Germany also lost its African colonies (Tanganyika — present day Tanzania; South West Africa — present day Namibia; Togo; and Cameroon) when it was defeated by the Allied powers in the First World War. But why are there many black players in the German team and none in the Italian team?

The absence of black players in the Italian team is even more intriguing when we examine statistical data on the proportion of black people in each European country. Italy is ranked as the country with the 10th highest proportion of black people (1.2 per cent) in Europe — higher than Spain (1.17 per cent), Germany (0.65 per cent), and Austria (0.51 per cent). Yet, Spain, Germany and Austria have many black players in their teams. Why is Italy unable to nurture and select black players from the almost one million people of African descent living in the country — many of them in precarious conditions as those in France?

There is a lot in football that begs for serious research, which can throw light on race relations, multiculturalism, racism, xenophobia and identity politics.

But let’s enjoy the AFCON-Euros on Tuesday and Wednesday. Don’t relax on your sofa with a tv. Get out of your house and try to watch it on a super screen at a fan zone if there is one in your neighbourhood. It is the next best thing to a stadium experience.

Yusuf Bangura writes from Nyon, Switzerland. Email: Bangura.ym@gmail.com