Large international events like the World Cup and the Olympics are opportunities for the world to see who countries choose to represent themselves at various activities. This gives insight into human-biodiversity but also illustrates who is held up as a symbol of national identity. Europe’s changing demographics have been visible at soccer tournaments for decades.
History
In 1998 the heavily Non-White French World Cup team caused many to celebrate France’s changing racial demographics with many chanting “Black, Blanc, Beur” representing Black, White and Arab team members. Later there were allegations that France had implemented a quota on ethnic minorities for their soccer team. In 2006 the seemingly exclusively ethnic Italian team beat the diverse French team with ethnically Algerian Zinedine Zidane infamously head butting an Italian player. The provocative remarks were alleged to be racial (though later confirmed not to be) with Time magazine describing it as “A Window on Europe’s Identity Crisis.” The mostly White teams of Spain and Germany prevailed in 2010 and 2014 respectively. In 2018, as populism and anti-immigrants sentiment had swept across the West, France’s diverse team’s victory over homogeneous Croatia was seen by liberal commenters as a victory for immigration. Trevor Noah found himself in hot water for congratulating Africa on their World Cup win. In the 2021 European cup finals all of England’s Black penalty kickers missed and they lost to the all White Italian team. At the 2022 Qatar World Cup, the largely Castizo Argentinian team beat out France’s diverse squad as the Washington Post wondered why Argentina didn’t have any black players. Argentinean players later found themselves in hot water singing a song mocking the French team’s lack of connection to France that emerged from this World Cup. Whatever the outcome of this year’s world cup is, I figure it would be interesting to look at each Western country’s demographics before the tournament. For the purposes of this article, mixed Hispanic players from Latin America will be labelled as “Mestizo” and mostly black players from the Caribbean or Latin America will be labelled as “Black” even if they have some non-African ancestry. Some players from Spain and Portugal are pretty dark skinned, but will be labelled as white unless there is evidence of non-European ancestry.
Bosnia
As far as I can tell, there are no non-European players on Bosnia’s squad. Here are the birth countries of the players:
Canada
In terms of birth country, 19 were born in Canada, 3 in the UK, and one each in Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. The lone Asian is Mathieu Choinière, a Filipino. Canada’s team is less white than it was in 2022. Edit: Mathieu Choinière is half white.
Switzerland
22 of the players were born in Switzerland, 2 were born in Cameroon, and one in the UK and one in Spain. The team was 69% White in 2022, and 65% white in 2018.
Scotland
20 team members were born in Scotland, 4 in England 1 on the Isle of Man and one in Australia.
United States
Steve Sailer did an extensive analysis of US world cup demographics. 35% of the team is white, down from 39% in 2022.
Germany
Everyone on the team was born in Germany with the exception of a Russian German who was born in Uzbekistan. The German team was 65% white in 2022, and 78% white in 2018.
Netherlands
All team members were born in the Netherlands. The Dutch team was 62% white in 2022.
Sweden
Every member of the team was born in Sweden. The Swedish team did not make it in 2022, but was 87% white in 2018.
Belgium
Every player on the team was born in Belgium with the exception of one player who was born in Senegal. The team was 73% white in 2022, and 61% white in 2018.
New Zealand
19 of the players were born in New Zealand, 4 were born in the UK and the remaining players were born in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia.
France
23 players were born in France, the remaining were born in Italy, the UK and the Republic of the Congo. The French team was 32% white in 2022, and 26% white in 2018.
Norway
All players on the team were born in Norway.
Austria
Every player was born in Austria. The captain, David Alaba, was born to a Nigerian father and a Filipino mother.
Portugal
24 of the 26 players were born in Portugal and the remaining were born in Switzerland and Brazil. The Portuguese team was 68% white in 2022 and 57% white in 2018.
Croatia
From what I could tell, the Croatian team is 100% white. Here is the birth country of the players:
England
Every player was born in England with the exception of one who was born in the Ivory Coast. England’s team was 69% white in 2022 and 48% white in 2018.
Spain
Every member of the team was born in Spain with the exception of one player born in France. The Spanish team was 89% white in 2022 and 83% white in 2018.
Czechia
From what I can tell, the Czechia team is 100% European and born in Czechia. One player, Hugo Sochůrek, appears somewhat dark skinned, but I can’t find any evidence of him having non-European ancestry,
Australia
Of the players, 18 were born in Australia, two were born in Scotland and the rest were born in Italy, Guinea, Croatia, Kenya, Tanzania and Belgium. This is less white than the 81% squad from 2022.
Change Over Time
I wanted to look at three countries to examine the change over time. Here are the overall trends for England, France and Germany. Keep in mind that not all of these teams competed in every tournament.
Overall
Here is what the demographics of the various countries teams look like overall:
Something notable about the data is the abundance of players who have one black and one white parent. Of these, 40 have a white mother and black father, and only 6 have a white father and black mother. Another notable combo was Black + MENA, which produced Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal, two stars whose names I would recognize even though I don’t follow soccer. Please let me know if I made a mistake anywhere, or you want me to share the raw data.
Soccer is interesting because it's not clear that one race is best at it like basketball.
Any chance you could share the raw dataset?