The World Cup always brings to the fore what is considered the purest and simplest form of identity: national identity.
But the 2026 tournament showed, perhaps as clearly as any other global event, that modern national identities are complex, contested, and far from simple.
The composition of the Morocco World Cup team provides a perfect example of this.
Nineteen of the team’s 26 players were born outside Morocco, and many are from Spain or France, the two European powers that colonized Morocco. The composition of the team raised interesting questions about dual citizenship and loyalty, national identity, diaspora, and the enduring legacy of colonialism.
Similar complexities can be seen throughout the tournament. Many players on the national teams of the United States, Canada, France, England, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Australia come from immigrant families.
With increasingly exclusive nationalist politics in North America and Europe, multicultural teams are competing on the world’s biggest sporting stages in some of the countries where the most heated debates over national identity are taking place.
It is difficult to overlook historical contradictions. Many of the players representing European countries come from diaspora communities with roots in countries that were once colonized by the same countries. The composition of the team suggests that contemporary national identity cannot be easily separated from colonialism, empire, and immigration.
Furthermore, on many teams in North America and Europe, most players from immigrant families are racial minorities living in majority-white societies. Tensions and contradictions are most evident when national and racial identities intersect.
After the Netherlands lost to Morocco in a penalty shootout on June 29, three black Dutch players who missed a penalty were immediately subjected to racist abuse online. The incident exposed the recurring contradictions at the heart of modern national identity. In other words, if minority players succeed, they are integrated into the nation, but if they fail, they are treated as outsiders.
America’s contradictions
The case of the United States, which co-hosts the tournament with Canada and Mexico, is a particularly typical example.
President Donald Trump’s political program is defined, at least in part, by the politics of white grievance and anti-immigrant policies.
President Trump has repeatedly appealed to white victimhood and, according to Amnesty International, began his second term with a series of measures that reinforced the central white supremacist narrative that “whiteness is synonymous with American identity.”
On the first day of his second term, President Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program and then issued an executive order prioritizing the resettlement of white Afrikaners from South Africa. His administration recently expanded the program, creating an additional 10,000 refugee slots for white South Africans while excluding non-white refugees.
The Trump administration also carried out an unprecedented crackdown on primarily non-white immigrants. In 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested approximately 400,000 immigrants and deported most of them. ICE recently stepped up its efforts, arresting 10,000 immigrants in five days in late June.
The crackdown has raised concerns that the 2026 World Cup will be defined more by exclusion than participation.
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, more than 120 prominent rights groups, including Amnesty International, the NAACP, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), jointly issued a travel advisory for the World Cup.
The concerns appear to have been at least partially justified. The Trump administration denied entry to award-winning Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Altan, imposed strict travel restrictions on the Iranian national team, and detained Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein for seven hours upon his arrival in the United States.
In this chaotic situation, the United States advanced to the Round of 16 before being eliminated by Belgium.
Six team members were born outside the United States, and more than half of the players hold dual citizenship.
White American fans lining soccer stadiums in Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle and other U.S. cities almost certainly included Trump supporters. There is a surprising irony in seeing members of a political movement defined in part by the politics of white grievance stand in a stadium and shout “USA” for a national team that features players like Folarin Balogun, Alejandro Zendejas, Haji Wright and other players from immigrant families.
Nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in the tournament’s main host countries. This World Cup, perhaps more than any previous World Cup, has exposed the instability and contradictions of modern nationalism. While political movements may imagine nations as ethnically, racially coherent, or culturally fixed entities, the teams representing those nations tell very different stories. National soccer teams are a product of migration, diaspora, colonial history, and debates about “us” and “them.”
Perhaps the most important lesson of the 2026 World Cup ultimately has nothing to do with soccer talent, playing style or coaching strategy. Perhaps the most lasting lesson of the convention is that national identity is not as fixed or simple as many nationalists imagine.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
