I’ve been following the Football World Cup very closely over the last few weeks. I’ve watched most of the games, live when possible and via full game replays or highlights when the games are too late to watch in my time zone.

I have been working on these takes and now that we are at the Semi-final stage of the World Cup I’m finally trying to put this all together so that it is not entirely retrospective.

Diaspora World Cup

One obvious takeaway that people have been discussing since the group stage is the number of diaspora that we see across the teams. So many teams are full of diaspora and the descendants of diaspora. This means that many countries owe their success to the diaspora of their country training in academies and football systems in other countries, like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal, or to the immigrants and children of immigrants who have grown up in these countries representing them, such as England, France and Spain (3 of our 4 semi-finalists).

This is a reminder of the success of immigration in Europe and North America, at a time of rising scapegoating of immigrants.

For Africa, where African diaspora (or their descendants) are returning to represent African countries, we see the benefits of these players getting training in countries with larger funding for football infrastructure.

The thing is that a lot of this reinforces the inequality caused by colonialism and extractive industries, which took wealth out of colonised nations and concentrated it in the countries that now dominate world football. These countries are the ones with the best chance of winning, and so for players they are often an easy choice when they have a national team option.

We have seen this with some of the most high profile players who could be playing for African countries, but have ended up playing for the sides in wealthier nations like France or England. Importantly this is not to discredit any individual players’ identity as French or English, but in a zero-sum game where you can’t represent two different nations, this presents a challenge for these players to choose a nation to represent, and I think it’s entirely reasonable that they first favour the country they have grown up in, that’s only natural.

I think South Africa is interesting when it comes to this topic because it is not quite like the other African countries. Most of the South African team (Bafana Bafana) is made up of players who are playing in the South African league. This is interesting because we don’t seem to have the same kind of economic immigration from South Africa to European countries, likely because of distance and expense of doing so, that creates the kind of diaspora communities that other African countries have in places like Europe. It’s also likely an indicator of the relative strength of the South African league in Africa, which is reinforced by Mamelodi Sundowns being CAF champions.

It is great that South African players can earn a comfortable living playing for top South African clubs, and that the infrastructure is good enough to keep these players. The downside here is losing out on the ceiling of outcomes of players training and growing up in European academies that have the greatest resources. The inequality in South Africa also drives a high standard of living for top earning South African players that makes the relative difference in economic outcome from playing in Europe less enticing, even if the absolute value of player wages in Europe is far higher than in South Africa for elite talent.

On the other hand we do have some immigrants, or the children of them, in the Bafana Bafana team. Most notable is Ime Okon, who was born in South Africa to a Nigerian father and South African mother. This is a success story for embracing people from other African countries in South Africa, and something we should be reminded of given the attempts of some to push anti-immigrant tension in South Africa.

That said, I don’t know what the solution is for South Africa, I’m not an expert on football development. The obvious step is increasing the funding for grassroots football and making it more accessible as a career for more young South Africans, that I can get behind.

Plans with key players succeed

On the tactical aspects of the World Cup and what helps big teams succeed, I think there is one obvious trend and takeaway we can see.

It is important to build around your star players, but not force everything through them. Make plans that get the best out of your star players and the rest of the team instead of just catering to the whims of your biggest players or picking the biggest names for your team.

All four semi-finalists seem like obvious examples for the success of this approach.

England have built around Harry Kane and his tendency to drop deep and occupy deeper spaces when his team is in possession. He has historically thrived with wingers that run in behind and are an outlet for him to play balls to, as well as stretching the opposition to create the space to drop deep into. This seems very obvious in the choice of wingers that Thomas Tuchel has selected as well as the ones he didn’t select (Cole Palmer, Phil Foden etc). Additionally this movement of Kane creates space for a midfielder to make runs into, as we have seen Jude Bellingham doing so well. This is a clear combination that Tuchel has favoured and found success with. Everything England does seems built around this synergy, one that doesn’t require Kane to score all the goals, but allows him and the rest of the team to work in complement with each other and get the best from every individual player.

France on the other hand have an embarrassment of attacking riches, and despite all the memes about dictator Mbappe, I don’t think they warp their game plan around him. We have Michel Olise who has been one of the best creative midfielders in the world for the last 12 months that synergises excellently with a forward line that loves making runs in behind. France have built a more attacking team in this World Cup than previous ones to make space for all these elite attackers to excel (including Dembele of course). This is a change from previous Didier Deschamps sides, and to me indicates a decision to build the team around the collective of attacking talents and not just Mbappe.

Successful Spain sides (2010 World Cup winning side) have historically been built around a style of high possession tiki-taka football that emphasises the collective strengths over the individual. They came into this World Cup with a standout young star in Lamine Yamal who was also recovering from injury. Whilst Yamal’s talent does shine, he has not been the standout decider in Spain’s run to the semi-final. It’s been another team game built around suffocating teams with their possession and collective ability to retain possession and therefore limit opponents’ chances.

For Argentina it might be tempting to see it as the Lionel Messi show, but even this has been an example of playing with his talent and the team’s talent rather than forcing everything through the star. Whilst Messi has defied his age and reinforced his greatness as a player, we have once again seen the collective of Argentina come through in clutch moments to see them through to the semi-final. Like Kane, Messi is not always looking to be the goal scorer though and his ability to see the right pass and execute on it makes his team better rather than just reliant on him.

Speaking of Messi we have to come to Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal for comparison. The most obvious example of forcing play through a single player. Ronaldo cannot, or does not want to, play the team game in the same way as many of these other stars (at least not any more). In my opinion Portugal have one of the strongest (alongside France) squads in the tournament, but their inability to utilise the incredible talent of their midfield and depth of their squad cost them throughout this tournament.

FIFA’s ruined credibility

Finally I cannot forget the disaster that this tournament has been for FIFA. Fortunately for them though I will need to save this for my next post, so that I can get this post out before the first semi-final this evening. Keep an eye out for that.