Play it like Yamal

In a thrilling Euro 2024 semi-final in Munich, a powerful French team was beaten by a resurgent Spain. Both the European footballing powerhouses featured star-studded squads, but there was no doubt about the player who shone brightest. Lamine Yamal, days away from his 17th birthday, the youngest player ever to play in a Euros semis, twisted and turned with the French defence massed around him, and unleashed a shot that rocketed into the top right corner of the French goal, dipping and curling as it went in.With that, the boy from Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy, who has drawn comparisons with Lionel Messi from the moment he made his Barcelona debut last year, announced himself on the big stage. His presence also heralded something new for Spain, one of the only major footballing nations in Europe that, till this Euro, has fielded largely monoracial teams. Yamal’s father is an immigrant from Morocco. His mother is an immigrant from Equatorial Guinea. Yamal wears boots featuring the flags of both countries (along with the Spanish flag). He is not alone in the squad. On the other side of the pitch there’s 21-year-old Nico Williams, whose electrifying pace has lit up the Euros. Williams’ parents fled their native Ghana, walking barefoot for days across the Sahara before seeking asylum in Spain, where they were almost deported. Williams’ older brother Inaki plays for the Ghana national team.While European countries that ran major colonial empires have featured multiracial football teams for a long time now (France and Portugal were among the first to cap black players back in the 1930s, the Netherlands debuted black players in the 1960s and England in the 1970s), Spain, with its history of economic collapses in the recent past, has been a country of emigration rather than immigration till only a decade ago. Football is the great immigration success story of Europe. It’s also a public theatre of race issues, a medium through which Europe’s pro- and anti-immigrant narratives play out. No team embodies that more than the team that was on the receiving end of Yamal’s sensational strike. No wonder then, that ahead of France’s crucial quarter-finals encounter against Portugal last week, Kylian Mbappé, who may be the most recognisable French person in the world right now, warned that his country was in a “catastrophic” political situation.Just days before, the French far-right party National Rally, led by the zealously anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen, had surged to strong gains in the first round of snap elections in the country. “I think now, more than ever, you need to get (out to vote),” Mbappé, who is of Cameroonian and Algerian descent, said. “It is an urgent juncture. We cannot let our country fall into the hands of these people.” A day later, France scraped through to the semi-finals, keeping their hopes alive for yet another major trophy. And two days later, Marine Le Pen’s party crashed to a shock defeat, relegated to third position as France wrapped up its elections.If France’s remarkably multiracial team had managed to win the Euros they would have been heralded as a shining example, along with the election results, of how France defeated bigotry in favour of diversity. It wouldn’t have been the first time. The French football team has been at odds with the country’s far right for decades. In 1998, when an unfancied French team, led by Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, went to the World Cup, they were acutely aware of what the far right thought of them. Back then, it was Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had vocally criticised the football team. But when the French won the World Cup, a nation erupted in delirium. More than a million people descended on the Champs-Élysées — projected on the Arc de Triomphe, against the backdrop of the French tricolour, were just two words, “Merci Zizou” — “thank you Zizou”.Overnight, the team became a shining symbol of a new, successful, multicultural France — “Black, Blanc, Beur” or “Black, White, Arab”, a play on the tricolour of the French national flag.The euphoria was short lived. Four years later, Jean-Marie Le Pen stunned France by advancing to the second round of the presidential elections, showing how much popular support his anti-immigration stance enjoyed. That support has only grown over the decades. In 2017, Marine Le Pen garnered even more votes as she made it to the second round of the French elections. In 2018, France again won the World Cup, with a team that was even more racially diverse than the one in 1998, with Mbappé as its standout star.Sporting success does not change countries, but one thing is certain — there is no better example of what a successful, well-integrated, multi-cultural society, with immigrant success stories, can look like than a major European football team.For France, it is the victory of the much-maligned suburbs of Paris and other major cities — the infamous ‘banlieues’. From their goalkeeper Mike Maignan (Haitian father, Guadeloupean mother) to their spearhead Mbappé, via their indefatigable midfield maestro N’Golo Kanté (Malian parents), more than half the French squad has been drawn from the banlieues.This is because the football ecosystem in Europe is perhaps the best example of a system that is truly free of privilege or discrimination — if you are a seven- or eight-year-old boy with a flair for the game and the desire to pursue it, you will get exactly the same opportunities and backing, no matter what race, colour, class, or economic background you come from.At the Euros, the semi-final line-ups reflect this reality. England and the Netherlands, the other semi-finalists, also have highly diverse teams. For the Netherlands, Cody Gakpo (Ghanaian-Dutch) has led with goals, Tijjani Reijnders (Indonesian-Dutch) and Xavi Simons (Afro-Surinamese-Dutch) have orchestrated the midfield, and Virgil van Dijk (Afro-Surinamese-Dutch), their captain, has been a colossus in defence.Bukayo Saka, who scored England’s only goal before a penalty shootout in the quarter-finals, is the son of first-generation Nigerian immigrants. As Europe tussles with its far right, its great football teams wear colours of multiculturalism proudly.The writer is a sports journalist.