![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/imageedit_1_9244814394.jpg\")
The Moroccan team celebrates after defeating the Netherlands in a penalty shootout in the World Cup round of 32 on Monday night in Mexico. (AP Photo\/Sofia Yaker)<\/p>\nThere are seven sets of brothers on rosters at this World Cup.<\/p>\n
Only three play for the same country.<\/p>\n
Nico and Inaki Williams were born in Spain to Ghanaian parents and play for the same Spanish club, Athletic Bilbao. But Nico represents Spain; Inaki, after initially saying it wasn\u2019t fair to take a roster spot from someone who \u201cfelt Ghana 100%,\u201d plays for the Black Stars now.<\/p>\n
Desire Doue says he and older brother Guela \u201care like twins,\u201d but the former plays for France, the nation of their mother, and the latter for Ivory Coast, the nation of their father.<\/p>\n
John Souttar plays for Scotland. His brother Harry played for Scotland at the youth level but switched to Australia, where their mother was born.<\/p>\n
Brian Brobbey (Netherlands) and Derrick Luckassen (Ghana), who have the same Ghanaian mother but different fathers, became the first brothers to score for different nations at the same World Cup.<\/p>\n
The brave, new World Cup.<\/p>\n
The migration World Cup.<\/p>\n
The diaspora World Cup.<\/p>\n
The tournament expanded to 48 teams this year, and 40 have at least one player on the 26-man roster born outside the country. Curacao had only one player born on the Caribbean island. Qatar had players born in 10 other countries. Twenty players on Democratic Republic of the Congo were born elsewhere, 17 on Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17 on Haiti, 16 on Algeria.<\/p>\n
Morocco has 19. At one point in the opener against Brazil, that included all 11 on the field.<\/p>\n
The Moroccan team celebrates after defeating the Netherlands in a penalty shootout in the World Cup round of 32 on Monday night in Mexico. (AP Photo\/Sofia Yaker)<\/p>\n
The U.S. team is not immune from the vagaries of migration and citizenship quirks. In Wednesday\u2019s 2-0 win against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Folarin Balogun and Malik Tillman scored goals for a country they barely knew until recently.<\/p>\n
Balogun was born in New York only because his Nigerian mother, visiting from England, was seven months pregnant and denied boarding for the flight back to London. They returned a month later, and Folarin grew up in England, representing it on youth national teams and dreaming of playing for the Three Lions at a World Cup one day.<\/p>\n
Tillman was born in Germany to a German mother and an American serviceman father who left the family shortly after. Malik grew up in Germany, representing it on youth national teams and dreaming of playing for Die Mannschaft at a World Cup one day.<\/p>\n
When the call never came, they applied for U.S. passports and switched soccer nationalities.<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years ago, it wouldn\u2019t have been possible. FIFA regulations stipulated that once you represented a country in an official capacity at any level, you couldn\u2019t change.<\/p>\n
The rules were altered in 2004 at the urging of Algeria, which was struggling to field a competitive national team with wholly domestic players and saw dozens of better prospects from the diaspora living in France.<\/p>\n
FIFA instituted a one-time switch before the age of 21.\u00a0That\u2019s been modified twice since, most recently in 2020 to allow a switch at any age as long as you haven\u2019t played more than three official matches (friendlies don\u2019t count) or appeared in a major international competition at the senior level for another country.<\/p>\n
From the 2002 through 2018 World Cups, the number of nationality switches hovered in the 70s and 80s for the 32-team tournament. In 2022, it shot up to 137, or 16.5% of rosters, and for the first time a player (Switzerland\u2019s Breel Embolo) scored a World Cup goal against his birth nation (Cameroon).<\/p>\n
In 2026, with 48 teams and 1,248 roster spots, it\u2019s up to 292.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s nearly one in four players. Globally, about 4% of people don\u2019t live in their birth nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national team is no longer only a reflection of population inside the border,\u201d Myriam Cherti, a senior researcher at Oxford University\u2019s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, told the BBC. \u201cIt\u2019s increasingly a reflection of migration, history and global mobility.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a reflection of opportunity, rooted in a desire to play on the planet\u2019s biggest stage, in many cases, more than some unwavering allegiance to another flag.<\/p>\n
The profile of most foreign-born players is similar: Grew up in another country, represented it at the youth level, didn\u2019t get called by the senior team, applied for a nationality switch.<\/p>\n
And were welcomed with open arms.<\/p>\n
Morocco\u2019s rise from not qualifying for four straight World Cups to reaching the 2022 semifinals and looking dangerous again here can be traced to a shift in the federation\u2019s philosophy of player identification. Instead of looking exclusively within, it sent scouts to France and other European nations with robust youth development systems to find the sons of Moroccan immigrants.<\/p>\n
France supplied 99 players in this World Cup, 13 of whom play for Algeria, 12 for Haiti, 11 for Congo and 10 for Senegal. Sixty-seven are from the Netherlands, 50 are from England and 47 are from Germany.<\/p>\n
![\"Bosnia's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/sut-l-diasporaworldcup-0704.jpg\")
Bosnia\u2019s Esmir Bajraktarevic (20) and U.S. midfielder Malik Tillman (17) battle for the ball during the World Cup round of 32 soccer match between the United States and Bosnia in Santa Clara on Wednesday. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez)<\/p>\n
Bosnia and Herzegovina midfielder Esmir Bajraktarevic is from Appleton, Wisc., the son of immigrants who fled the bloody civil war in the 1990s. More people of Bosnian heritage (4 million) live outside the borders than inside (3.1 million).<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a classic example of what\u2019s happening lately since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d said coach Sergej Barbarez, whose team qualified for only its second World Cup. \u201cWe expanded our horizons all the way to the U.S. We\u2019ve been looking for guys who want to play for Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have guys who were actually born all over the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is maybe a big advantage for us that we managed to bring in all the different cultures, habits and mentality toward football and put them into one unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cape Verde recruited a player on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
Canada got a 6-foot-3 defender who had spent his entire life in the United Kingdom but mentioned to a former English club teammate in a sauna that he had a Canadian grandmother. The player contacted Canada coach Jesse Marsch, who leaned on the prime minister to expedite Alfie Jones\u2019 passport application.<\/p>\n
Canadian goalkeeper Owen Goodman didn\u2019t have birthright or parental heritage but had lived in a small town in Ontario from age 5 to 13. He hired an immigration attorney and ultimately was granted citizenship based on residency.<\/p>\n
Iran got a midfielder from Germany when his aunt, a television and film star in Tehran, randomly posted a family photo on social media.<\/p>\n
Dennis Eckert was born and raised in Germany and doesn\u2019t speak Farsi, but his late grandfather was Iranian.\u00a0To verify his lineage, he flew to Tehran for a DNA test that was compared to one from his aunt. The family connection was confirmed in April, he received his passport in May and Iran named him its roster in June \u2014 as Dennis Dargahi, his aunt\u2019s surname.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t the only late addition to a World Cup roster. A week after French-born Yoan-Ange Bonney\u2019s nationality switch was approved, Ivory Coast named him to its roster even though he had yet to don a Les Elephants jersey. Australia got an Italian midfielder who, during the 2022 World Cup, mocked the Socceroos\u2019 loss to Japan on social media.<\/p>\n
Late-blooming U.S. goalkeeper Matt Turner has a great-grandmother from Lithuania, got a passport and emailed the federation when playing for Team USA \u201cdidn\u2019t feel like it was going to become a reality for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that email got left in the inbox, I guess, fortunately for me,\u201d said Turner, who went from being undrafted by Major League Soccer in 2016 to starting in the 2022 World Cup. \u201cIt worked for me, playing here in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SUT-L-worldcup1-036.jpg\")
U.S. midfielder Malik Tillman takes a corner kick against Paraguay during their World Cup Group D match in Inglewood on June 12. (K.C. Alfred \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s on a national team where six starters are foreign-born and four had little connection to the United States \u2014 Balogun, Tillman, Sergino Dest and Antonee Robinson \u2014 until joining it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a melting pot,\u201d Turner said. \u201cThis is our country, right? This is America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Balogun and Tillman\u2019s talent has been undeniable, but both are shy by nature and struggled to acclimate to a country and culture they barely knew. Tillman, who speaks haltingly in his second language of English, seemed to turn a corner last summer in the Concacaf Gold Cup, missing a first-half penalty kick in the semifinals against Costa Rica, then making one in a shootout that sent the U.S. to the final.<\/p>\n
Tillman\u2019s spectacular free kick in Wednesday\u2019s 82nd minute beat Bosnia and delivered the United States\u2019 first World Cup knockout victory since 2002.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just wanted to feel like he had a place,\u201d captain Tim Ream said. \u201cHe\u2019s a quiet kid, but he\u2019s just come on in leaps and bounds. Now you look at him, and he looks like he\u2019s playing with such an ease and a calmness. It\u2019s incredible to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know we\u2019ve had conversations with the other guys. He\u2019s had that in him all this time. It was just a matter of him finding the confidence and him believing in himself, and he\u2019s doing that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s not as easy as changing passports, jerseys and anthems.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to follow your heart,\u201d Turner said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re playing for your national team, you have to really feel it in your blood if you want to perform to the highest level. You have to go and play when everyone else is on (offseason) holidays.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to really want to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are seven sets of brothers on rosters at this World Cup. Only three play for the same…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,74,76,75,1083,127],"class_list":["post-385567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}