One notable feature of the Euro 2016 tournament is that a fair number of the 552 players who will participate are not of European or, indeed, Christian origin at all. The visible multicultural make-up of the Euro teams stands in ironic contrast to the overt xenophobia currently disrupting politics on that continent. The greater irony is that countries that have been vociferously opposed to West Asian and North African (WANA) refugees fleeing civil war or display hard-line antagonism to Islam appear to have no problem when representatives of this region and religion play in their national teams.
Germany is a good example. Eight players in its national team are of foreign descent - Cameroonian, Albanian, Tunisian, Senegalese, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. Several of them have been born in Germany and come from integrated second- or third-generation immigrant families. In football-crazy Germany, they are revered stars. Yet, Germany's national politics has been polarised over the issue of foreign refugees; its official accommodative policy has been disparaged by politicians across the political spectrum. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, no mean football enthusiast, led the refugee-exchange deal between European Union (EU) and Turkey in return for visa-free travel for Turkish citizens. The outcry in Germany against the deal, however, has not been focused on the cynical horse-trading that characterises it. Instead, politicians have expressed their reservations about easing travel restrictions for Turks, the unspoken implication being that these people would then pour into Europe. They see no dissonance in having Mesut Ozil and Emre Can, two Turkish stars of the first team, representing the country.
Germany is no exception in reflecting this dissonance of attitudes: the Swiss team has Cameroonians, Ivorians, Congolese, Kosovars and Albanians (the latter from Muslim families); Austria, where a right-wing nationalist party narrowly lost the national elections, has one player of Nigerian-Philippine descent and another who was born in Pakistan to a Nigerian father and Austrian mother. In Belgium, 11 of its squad are of WANA origin. In France, the European country most riven by the impact of Islamic terrorism, ten of the squad originally come from the Congo, Senegal and Mali (and at least three are of slave descent from the French territories of Reunion Island and Guadeloupe). As elsewhere, racially-motivated xenophobia has intensified in France in direct proportion to the economic slowdown. Yet French citizens of all hues still proudly celebrate the 1998 World Cup win by a team that was patently not ethnically French in origin. This racial diversity was feted at the time; its most renowned Algerian refugee, Zinedine Zidane, now manages Real Madrid, one of Europe's most respected teams.
Yet Zidane's fortunes reflect the anomalies of racial politics. He is one of a tiny minority of managers of African descent; the majority are ethnically European or South Americans of European origin, never American-Indian descent. As with sportsmen (and, at one time, musicians) of African origin in the US, non-European footballers are accepted because it is acknowledged that talent is nationality-agnostic. It is easy to cheer them as entertainers on a distant sporting field; admitting them to higher counsels of management, where cultural factors come into play, is another issue altogether. That is why the hundreds of players of WANA or American-Indian origin who become huge stars in European leagues rarely make it to that continent's footballing management once their playing days are over. In that sense, European football still mirrors Europe's deeper prejudices. Still, when the starting whistle blows on June 10 at the Stade de France, it is possible for the world to celebrate, for a short while, the very best advantages of diversity.
