Dr. Mahfoud Amara
The decision by footballers of immigrant background in Europe to represent the national team of their parents’ or grandparents’ country of origin has become a recurrent and highly politicized phenomenon. While often framed in public debate as a purely instrumental choice—linked to career opportunities or sporting pragmatism—this interpretation is increasingly insufficient, particularly when we consider third- and fourth-generation Europeans of North African descent.
The case of Luca Zidane, son of France’s most emblematic footballing figure, Zinedine Zidane (Zizou), choosing to represent Algeria, illustrates how such decision is embedded in deeper questions of belonging, memory, identity transmission, and post-colonial legacies. This choice I argue should be understood not as acts of disloyalty, nor as failures of integration, but as expressions of plural belonging within a European context still struggling to accommodate post-colonial identities.
The presence of large North African and sub-Saharan African diasporas in Europe is inseparable from the history of colonialism and post-war reconstruction. Following the Second World War, countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain actively recruited labor from their colonies and former colonies to rebuild devastated economies. Migration was officially conceived as temporary, yet it gradually became permanent, producing successive generations born and socialized in Europe. What distinguishes the current generation of footballers is that many are no longer migrants’ children, but migrants’ grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Their relationship to the “country of origin” is therefore not experiential but symbolic, mediated through family narratives, cultural memory, and inherited histories of displacement and exclusion.
Football operates as a powerful space where national identity is performed, recognized, and contested. In this sense, choosing to play for Algeria or Morocco (as for the cases of Achraf Hakimi and Brahim Diaz), is not necessarily a rejection of Europe, but often a response to the conditional belonging experienced in European societies. In countries like France, players of North African origin are frequently asked—explicitly or implicitly—to demonstrate loyalty, neutrality, or assimilation, particularly during moments of political tension, or debates on secularism and Islam. Celebrating a dual or multiple identity—through language, religion, or symbolic gestures—is often framed as incompatible with national cohesion.
Luca Zidane’s decision to represent Algeria carries a particular symbolic weight. Unlike many players whose selection may be attributed to limited access to elite European national teams, he is the son of a French national icon. His choice disrupts the dominant narrative that such decisions are merely strategic or opportunistic. More importantly, the public support of Zinedine Zidane himself, along with the presence of Luca’s Spanish-born mother and siblings in the stands during the AFCON matches, transforms this decision into a family-based, transnational affirmation of belonging. It reflects how identity is transmitted not only through citizenship, but through memory, affection, and historical consciousness.
A further dimension that deserves attention concerns how the integration of diaspora players is debated within the national teams of their grandparents’ countries of origin themselves. While these players are often celebrated when results are positive—particularly during major tournaments—their presence can also trigger ambivalent or even critical discourses domestically. Questions are sometimes raised about their “authentic” belonging, their commitment to the nation, or the sincerity of their attachment, with accusations of opportunism or visibility-seeking emerging in media and popular debates.
Football, and sport in general, thus exposes how national identity remains conditional and negotiated on both sides of the Mediterranean, challenging simplistic readings that frame these choices solely as acts of pride, loyalty, or post-colonial reconciliation.
Dr. Mahfoud Amara is an Associate Professor in Sport Social Sciences and Management at Qatar University.
