Citizenship and Nationhood in Les Bleus and the Nationalmannschaft

A paper I completed for one of my MA courses. Longer and less casual than my other writings, but feels like it should also be included here.

Citizenship and Nationhood in Les Bleus and the Nationalmannschaft

At the 1998 Men’s World Cup, the victorious French team became a symbol of France’s multiculturalism. Led by players like Lilian Thuram and Zinedine Zidane who had ties to the former French colonies, the phrase “black, blanc, beur” was often used to describe this team. Despite racist complaints from people like Jean-Marie Le Pen, this team was able to unite, if only temporarily, different segments of French society. In contrast, the German team at the 1998 Men’s World Cup did not have a similar multicultural makeup and their tournament was largely considered as “disastrous,” causing the German soccer federation (DFB) to revamp their whole youth scouting program.[1] However, by the 2010 Men’s World Cup, Germany was now the more successful team while France was now reeling from the dismissal of one of their teammates in the middle of an ongoing tournament.[2] Then by the 2018, France once again embraced their diversity and found success while Germany’s struggles began anew. These differing results in the Men’s World Cup over the past 20 years are reflective of the changing conceptions of citizenship in each country and how the soccer federations have responded to these policies, as well as how the federations and general public view diversity in their national teams. In this paper I am interested in exploring how non-white and non-ethnic German players have responded to challenges to their inclusion on the French and German men’s national teams and how the federations themselves have responded to increasing multiculturalism on their national soccer teams.[3] I will argue that despite increasing diversity and multiculturalism in France and Germany, antiquated ideas about citizenship have continued to influence players’ experiences on each country’s national soccer team.

 This research will focus on three time periods, but will also reference applicable moments in preceding and succeeding years, to see not only how each respective soccer federation has responded to migration over time, but also how German and French ideas about citizenship from the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century still exist in contemporary soccer. Laurent Dubois’ Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France and Raphael Honigstein’s Das Reboot: How German Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World serve as crucial texts for this investigation. Additionally, for this paper I am defining non-white as not being of European descent. Since this paper revolves around soccer, the definition of Europe includes all of the countries with federations that are members of the Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA. The first period focuses on the 1998 Men’s World Cup since this was the tournament of the victorious French team that inspired cheers of “black, blanc, beur,” and the failure of the German team. In addition to Zidane and Thuram, this team included players like Christian Karembeu from New Caledonia and Patrick Vieira who was born in Senegal, as well players like Didier Deschamps who were born in the metropole. This diversity meant that the team received racist attacks and players actions were scrutinized for actions such as not singing the national anthem before games. Whereas the German team at this tournament was completely composed of white players that performed poorly which led to the DFB changing their scouting methods. German teams at Men’s World Cups in subsequent years were more racially diverse which would result in greater success.

The second period revolves around the 2010 Men’s World Cup because this was the period of French soccer’s race quotas and underachieving performances on the international stage, as well as consistent success from the German national teams. A much more ethnically diverse German team was the third best team at the tournament, uniting behind a more multicultural team than the team in 1998. The French team underperformed and even went on strike to protest the removal of one of the team’s Black players from the tournament.

The final period focuses on the events surrounding 2018 Men’s World Cup since this is another period that is marked by successful French teams led by players with ties to the former French colonies, and a notable absence from striker Karim Benzema, as well as disappointing German performances. France was once again led to the championship by their players with ties to the former colonies while a German team who struggled at the tournament had their challenges blamed on their non-ethnic German players.[4]

France has always been a team that has incorporated immigrant and non-white players, with the first Black player for the team appearing in the 1930s. Unified Germany’s first Black player, however, first appeared for the team in the 2001, but West Germany had a couple Black players in the 1970s.[5][6][7] The vast time difference in between debuts for Black players in France and West Germany/Germany can partially be attributed to the policies surrounding immigration and how each country perceives race, nationhood, and citizenship. In Rogers Brubaker’s book Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Brubaker states that French nation building revolved around unity and “entailed cultural assimilation, for regional cultural minorities and immigrants alike.” Whereas in Germany “nationhood is an ethnocultural, not a political fact.”[8] The assimilationist perspective from France and the ethnocultural perspective from Germany about citizenship helps to explain the types of ethnic minority players included on each team, as well as why those players may receive backlash to their inclusion on national teams. An assimilationist perspective allows anyone to become “French” more easily if they are able to assimilate to the nation. This helps to explain how Raoul Diagne was able to become the first Black player for France in the 1930s, especially considering his mother was a white French woman and his father was a very influential Senegalese politician who spent time in metropolitan France. Of course, it is unsurprising that Germany did not have any Black players at the same time period, which was during the reign of Nazi Germany. Additionally, Brubaker notes that Germany’s ethnocultural position on immigration makes them more welcoming to ethnic German immigrants but much more closed off to non-German immigrants.[9] Furthermore, Brubaker writes that Germany’s actions in their colonies did not have the same end goals as France’s mission civilisatrice. This is to say that France meant for their colonies to be a true extension of the metropole, “la plus grande France,” which was partly based on a policy of assimilation. Brubaker writes that France’s efforts “went much further than its British or German counterparts in the legal and political assimilation of metropolitan and overseas regimes.”[10] With this in mind, it is also unsurprising that West Germany’s first Black players played in the 1970s and a reunified Germany’s first Black player came in 2001. Additionally, it explains why someone like Mesut Özil, who is of non-German European descent, faced backlash at times when he played for the German national team.

It is important to note that not all immigrants or members of ethnic minorities received the exact same treatment. In Michael Goebel’s Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism, Goebel describes how different ethnic groups received inconsistent treatment from white French people while in Paris. Black people from the United States received a more positive treatment than Black people from the French colonies. And even from the French colonies, those who came from the Caribbean were treated better than those from West Africa. Furthermore, migrants from Asia felt that different ethnic groups from the continent were being treated differently when in metropolitan France. Evidently, North Africans who were in metropolitan France received differing treatment as well. There was a clear racial hierarchy for the non-white people living in metropolitan France during the time period that Goebel focuses on in his book. Additionally, it has been documented that this racial hierarchy has continued until today.[11]

Brubaker emphasizes how crucial ethnicity was to German understanding of citizenship. Germany’s definition of citizenry was more inclusive of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and what was the Soviet Union at the time of Brubaker’s writing, rather than non-German immigrants.[12] In contrast to France, this policy has seemingly allowed Germany to remain much more ethnically homogenous than France, which is also something that has reflected on both countries soccer teams in the late 20^th century and the 21^st century. Culturally, non-ethnic Germans were not seamlessly included into Germany, and thus soccer, which is an extension of national culture, remained largely composed of ethnic Germans.

France hosted the 1998 Men’s World Cup after surprisingly failing to qualify for the previous two tournaments and had big expectations for the tournament. A German team that will still only about a decade removed from the fall of the Berlin Wall similarly had big expectations for the tournament after a decent performance as a unified Germany at the previous competition. However, these teams approached the tournament in different ways. France embraced the country’s multiculturalism and was composed of players from the overseas territories, of African descent, and even of non-French European descent. Germany, on the other hand, was composed entirely of white players who were primarily of German descent.

Zidane and Thuram, two of the prominent on this team, took different approaches to talking about their experiences playing with this team and the attention that they received from politicians, media, and the general public. Zidane has remained on the quieter on this subject matter, whereas Thuram has been very vocal about his experience with racism growing up in Paris and with the national team. Laurent Dubois’ Soccer Empire details some of the Thuram and Zidane’s experiences, as well as the other non-white players on the team.

One anecdote that Dubois writes about in his book is about right-winger Jean Marie Le Pen’s complaints about the way the soccer team was singing La Marseillaise before their matches at the 1998 World Cup and before the previous European Championship tournament in 1996. Le Pen did not think the team was singing the anthem “passionately enough” and questioned their Frenchness in the process, and even going so far as to call some of them “fake Frenchmen.” Dubois notes that this complaint from Le Pen “was a way of communicating a racist vision without articulating it, spreading doubt about whether immigrants and their descendants, especially those who are black or Arab, truly love France.”[13] In response, Zidane questioned if it actually mattered if players sang the anthem and stated that the team winning in 1998 as a collective of players from different areas of France and even elsewhere was the perfect repudiation of Le Pen and showed their patriotism for France. Karembeu, one of the players who did not sing the national anthem justified his actions because of what France did to his homeland of New Caledonia and even to members of his family. Although he previously did sing the anthem, once Le Pen made those comments before the European Championship in 1996 Karembeu “felt that silence was the only appropriate response to Le Pen.” Karembeu further justified his choice to not sing by saying “I can’t sing the French national anthem because I know the history of my people.”[14]

The diversity of the French team, and their success, in the late 1990s was a contrast to the German team at that time and was a point of pride for some French people as well: “Indeed, like French fans in the 1990s, the Dutch often presented their racially mixed team as a sign of their superiority over nations like arch-rival Germany, with its all-white teams and occasionally racist fans.”[15] Expectations were high for the German team after winning the 1996 European Championship. However, the performance at 1998 Men’s World Cup was so poor that it led to a complete reboot of how German soccer worked. Honigstein even called this tournament the beginning of the dark ages for the German national team.[16] This, in turn, eventually led to a German triumph at the 2014 Men’s World Cup. The team’s 1998 performance was seen as a failure from all levels of the federation, from those in charge to the players themselves and how the federation chose to scout players for the team. Rather than a response from the players, the most important reaction to 1998 came from the federation itself. Partially due to Germany’s antiquated citizenship laws that were not updated until 2000, the pool of players available to the German team did not include all the prospective players who grew up and learned soccer in Germany. Interestingly, Turkey took advantage of this oversight. Since players with Turkish backgrounds were not always citizens because of these citizenship rules, they played for the Turkish national team in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Turkish Football Association even had an office in Germany to identify these players. Some of these German born Turks would go on to help the Turkish national team to a third-place finish at the 2002 Men’s World Cup.[17] The choice to attempt to increase the scouting pool and reboot the federation was partially in response to France’s performance at the 1998 World Cup. Forward on the 1998 World Cup team Jurgen Klinsmann “called for a ‘revolution’ that followed the example of Aimé Jacquet’s successful work with 1998 World Cup winners France.”[18] Knowing that German citizenship laws marginalized players of non-German ethnicity until 2000, including the large Turkish population in the country, it provides more context as to why players like Özil felt, at times, attacked because of their identities. The almost mono-ethnic German team’s disappointing performance in addition to France’s triumph required the German federation to rethink their approach to creating the most competitive soccer team.

By 2010, the French and German team’s fates had been reversed with Germany having continued success in international tournaments, albeit without a championship, and France having turmoil within the team and the federation as a whole. The 2010 Men’s World Cup was noteworthy for several reasons. It was the first Men’s World Cup that was held in Africa, but the choice of the French players to strike also marked the occasion. The French Football Federation chose to send striker Nicolas Anelka home from the tournament. Anelka reportedly got into an altercation with the team’s head coach, Raymond Domenech, during halftime of one of the team’s games and refused to apologize. The FFF chose to support Domenech and send Anelka home, angering many of the other players. The next day at their practice the team’s captain Patrice Evra stormed off the field and returned to the team bus along with other players as they refused to practice. The players announced that this choice was to protest the FFF’s decision to send Anelka home from the tournament. There was solidarity among all of the players in response to the dismissal of their teammate. Like the 1998 team that united players of different backgrounds in response to hateful rhetoric, this 2010 team responded to backlash from their own federation by staying united. However, as political scientist Joseph Downing notes, blame immediately fell on the Black and Muslim players rather than the white coaches that were involved in the altercations. Philosopher Alain Finkielkraut even called the team a “gang of thieves with mafia morals,” which was a statement with clear racial undertones. Marine Le Pen even attributed the problem to players having “another nationality in their hearts,” which was likely a reference to the North African and Black players who often had dual nationality.[19]

There were certainly racial undertones to many of the decisions that the FFF and Domenech made during the World Cup, its preparation, and the following months. Domenech had fallen out with several players, many of whom were Black. France’s next game at the tournament after this debacle resulted in an unexpected loss to the host nation, meaning France exited this tournament without a win.[20] It was later revealed in 2011 that the FFF blamed these problems on the team’s Black and Muslim players, and that they were considering putting in a quota system to limit the amount of Black and North African players on the national team and on youth teams as well.[21][22]

When the revelation of a proposed quota system was revealed in 2011, there was an understandable uproar in France and it sparked discussions in other countries as well. The proposed quota system seemed to be targeting players with dual nationality, which were many of the Black and North African players that played soccer in France.[23] In a country that does not track race on its census, this situation publicly demonstrated how discrimination is still present in France despite the country’s efforts to masque the differences that come from race and ethnicity. Former players like Lilian Thuram spoke on the issue, especially since his former teammate Laurent Blanc was one of the people implicated in the quota debacle. Thuram’s focus was not on if Blanc was racist, but he more questioned why someone would exclude children from playing a game.[24] In addition to Thuram, Patrick Viera, another member of the famed 1998 team who was born in Senegal, criticized Blanc and the federation. Interestingly, Zidane came to Blanc’s defense during this period of time.[25]

After the 1998 Men’s World Cup, the French national team was symbol of the power of multiculturalism and assimilation. After the poor performance at the 2010 Men’s World Cup, now multiculturalism was seen as a danger to Frenchness. Whereas in 1998 players like Zidane and Thuram were celebrated across the country, the 2010 team inspired questions of why players like Anelka and Evra were on the field.

The team that Germany fielded at the 2010 Men’s World Cup was its most ethnically diverse in history. Honigstein said about that team and its crucial central midfielder Sami Khedira that “integration was the new story, Khedira was its poster boy.” This was a team where eleven of the twenty-three players had a background that included immigration to Germany. Khedira himself was of Tunisian origin and when talking about the 2010 team he said “of course we noticed that it’s something new to have German national players with Turkish, Ghanaian, Nigerian or Tunisian roots, but for our generation it’s very normal.”[26] Khedira was a part of the first generation that benefitted from the overhaul of how the DFB evaluated players for the national team which was seeing progress. Although the ethnic makeup of this team was different to German teams of the past, this team was a larger representative of Germany’s changing citizenship laws and changing ideas about belonging to the German nation, which was reflected in the DFB’s policies about youth soccer development. Like the French team in 1998, this team’s success was also the success of multiculturalism in Germany and the normalization of more non-ethnic Germans in Germany. Only twelve years after the disappointment in 1998, the German team was no longer only the team of Klinsmanns, and was now the team of Khediras, Özils, and Boatengs too. Its strength came from looking at both ethnic German and non-ethnic German players. Despite not winning the 2010 Men’s World Cup, the multiculturalism of this team captivated audiences along with their on the field style of play.[27] Players themselves viewed the 2010 Men’s World Cup as a transitional moment where the old guard was replaced with the new guards, which was also a transitional moment for multiculturalism on the team.[28] This tournament was the launchpad for Germany’s eventual victory at the next Men’s World Cup in 2014, which was also a team that included ethnic and non-ethnic Germans side by side. However, like what happened to the French team after they had less success, when the German team started to struggle in more recent years, non-ethnic Germans were the ones to blame.

There were high hopes for the French team going into the 2018 Men’s World Cup. After a disappointing finish at the European Championship tournament two years earlier, the French team now had a new young star, Kylian Mbappé, helping to lead the forward line at the tournament. This team was reminiscent of the 1998 team in the sense that this team successfully had players like Mbappé, whose parents are Algerian and Cameroonian, Antoine Griezmann, whose parents are white Frenchmen, and Raphaël Varane, who has Caribbean heritage. A starting lineup that included white, Black, and North African players, this team once again inspired chants of “black, blanc, beur.” Notably missing from this team was star striker Karim Benzema. Although Benzema had been successful throughout the years preceding this World Cup with his club team Real Madrid and was included on the team at the previous World Cup, Benzema was not selected for this team. The story of the team was their win as another example of the success of French multiculturalism and assimilation, however Benzema’s exclusion is a caveat to this narrative. He had been excluded from the national team since 2015 for “sporting choices” yet some, like former French national team player Samir Nasri, speculated that there was racism behind this choice.[29] Benzema himself had previously said “en gros, si je marque, je suis français, mais si je ne marque pas ou qu’il y a des problèmes, je suis arabe” in an interview from 2011. Although this was in reference to French supporters, this same mentality could be extended to the FFF and the national team coaches who, after Benzema’s blackmail scandal in 2015, began to exclude him from the team.[30] The FFF found reasons to exclude Benzema because he was not the perfect person. White players on the French team had more opportunities to make mistakes without worrying about jeopardizing their national team careers unlike the non-white players on the team. Even though the 2018 team was victorious, Benzema’s exclusion was still a talking point, especially considering the starter in what would have been Benzema’s likely position, Olivier Giroud, scored zero goals throughout the tournament.

Despite the exclusion of Benzema, the 2018 team was primarily led by players from immigrant backgrounds. As a great example of the success of diaspora and inclusion, as in 1998, there were still people who questioned if the positive reaction to the team’s diversity was emblematic of a greater change in French culture that was more accepting of other cultures. Along with the positive image that sport can create, sport can still hide the underlying issues in a society by uplifting a small number of people who belong to a marginalized group.[31] The non-white players on this team are allowed to be French because of their success with the national team, whereas Benzema’s Frenchness has been questioned despite having repeated success with his club team.

The French national teams from 1998, 2010, and 2018 have shown how citizenship and belonging continue to operate in France today. By assimilating to French culture, being an extraordinary and successful player, and not drastically upsetting the French status quo, non-white French players can be French. Like the ideas surrounding the conception of the French nation that Brubaker details, unity and assimilation were important. The united teams and the individual players of 1998 and 2018 have been celebrated, whereas the team from 2010 has had their allegiance to France questioned.

After winning the 2014 Men’s World Cup with a multicultural team, the German team was one of the favorites to win the 2018 edition. By this point the team was now “noted for their ‘diversity’” like France was.[32] A talented team composed of ethnic and non-ethnic Germans alike had a dismal performance and did not advance past the group stage of the tournament. Like France, the non-ethnic German players were the ones who often received backlash for the team’s poor performances. Before the start of the tournament, Özil and İlkay Gündoğan, two ethnically Turkish players met and posed for photos with the controversial Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Özil stated that this was not a political decision, but rather a way to honor his parents and their heritage. This created a controversy before the start of the tournament that was amplified by the poor performances by the German team in all of their games.[33] Before the tournament started, Gündoğan stated that German fans whistled at him during games simply because of his encounter with the Turkish president and that he expected more of this behavior during games once the tournament began.[34]

After the conclusion of the tournament, Özil decided to retire from playing for the German national team and cited the backlash he received for meeting with the Turkish president from the German public and the DFB itself as heavily influencing his decision. Özil wrote: “The treatment I have received from the DFB and many others makes me no longer want to wear the German national team shirt…. I am German when we win but I am an immigrant when we lose.” In this message Özil also criticized the DFB president specifically by accusing him of having a “racially discriminative background.”[35] However, some of Özil’s teammates denied that this racism occurred.[36] Özil, like Benzema before him, felt ostracized from the national team because of his ethnic background. Regardless of the new German citizenship laws and the recent success of the German national team, once there were challenges, players like Özil who had a non-ethnic German background were scapegoated, showing the limits of multiculturalism and integration in the country. Furthermore, this situation is representative of how Germany viewed citizenship in their nation in the early 20^th century, and also shows how this thinking has continued into today.

How and when Germany and France incorporated ethnic minority players into their teams has links back to how both countries viewed the nation and citizenship in the 19^th and early 20^th century. For France this meant that someone could become French with assimilation which is reflected in the ethnic makeup of their soccer teams since the 1930s. France was one of the first European countries to incorporate Black and North African players into their teams because of this idea of assimilation. However, there were always people like Jean-Marie Le Pen who would question the validity of their citizenship and allegiance to France. Additionally, those players who did not sufficiently assimilate were excluded from the team or blamed when the team lost. Citizenship for non-white players was conditional. A crucial difference between France and Germany, however, was the treatment of white players from elsewhere in Europe. Because of the concept of French assimilation, white non-ethnic French players were easily incorporated into national teams throughout the years. In Germany, however, German ethnicity was crucial for citizenship, and thus inclusion. This is reflected on the soccer teams that were largely composed of ethnic Germans until the 21^st century, which coincided with Germany changing their laws for citizenship. However, players like Özil or Khedira, despite winning trophies for Germany, could still be marginalized after a poor performance. This is reflective of older ideas about nation and citizenship in Germany. Although France and Germany have very ethnically diverse national teams today, players from both countries still can find that their allegiance to their country is questioned because of the way that France and Germany developed ideas about citizenship and nationhood. These ideas, despite changing political policies, have continued to influence culture and understandings of belonging in both countries today.

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[1] Raphael Honigstein, “How German Football Rose from the Ashes of 1998 to Become the Best in the World,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 5, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/05/germany-football-team-youth-development-to-world-cup-win-2014.

[2] Angelique Chrisafis, “France Football Heads Mired in Race Row over Alleged Quotas for Ethnic Players,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, April 29, 2011), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/29/french-football-race-row. It was revealed that the French Football Federation had a system in place to limit the amount of ethnic minorities on the French national teams.

[3] This phenomenon is also present in the women’s national teams of both Germany and France, however, there is better documentation on the men’s side of the game.

[4] Allison Meakem, “Mesut Ozil's Ghost Still Haunts Germany,” Foreign Policy, December 1, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/01/germany-world-cup-ozil-turkey-protest-dual-citizenship-reform-scholz/.

[5] When talking about a unified Germany, I am referring to the 1990 reunification.

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2001/may/30/newsstory.sport8

[7] Interestingly, Raoul Diagne and Erwin Kostedde, the first Black players for France and West Germany respectively, were mixed- race with white mothers and Black fathers.

[8] Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 1.

[9] Ibid, 3.

[10] Brubaker, 11.

[11] Black France/France Noire and Black Europe and the African diaspora investigate this more from the angle of the African diaspora.

[12] Brubaker, 14.

[13] Dubois, 101, 171.

[14] Ibid, 113, 171.

[15] Dubois, 102.

[16] Raphael Honigstein, Das Reboot: How German Soccer Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World (New York, NY: Nation Books, 2015), 61.

[17] Ibid, 113-114.

[18] Ibid, 42.

[19] Joseph Downing, “Success of French Football Team Masks Underlying Tensions over Race and Class,” The Conversation, July 13, 2018, https://theconversation.com/success-of-french-football-team-masks-underlying-tensions-over-race-and-class-99781.

[20] David Hytner, “World Cup 2010: France Revolt Leaves Raymond Domenech High and Dry,” The Guardian, June 20, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2010/jun/20/france-raymond-domenech-nicolas-anelka.

[21] Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg, and Mathilde Mathieu, “Exclusive: French Football Chiefs’ Secret Plan to Whiten ‘Les Bleus,’” Mediapart, April 28, 2011, https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/280411/exclusive-french-football-chiefs-secret-plan-whiten-les-bleus?_locale=en&onglet=full.

[22] Despite claims of French secularism, in the soccer world in France there continues to be a lot of Islamophobia. This same report noted that one national team coach prevented players from eating halal meat, and it was also reported that at a youth camp coaches checked the players for prayer mats. Additionally on the women’s side of the game, women who wear hijabs or other types of coverings are not allowed to wear them when playing soccer, despite FIFA allowing players to do so.

[23] Arfi et al.

[24] Bruce Crumley, “French National Soccer Rocked by Accusations of Racist Quotas,” Time, May 4, 2011, https://world.time.com/2011/05/04/french-national-soccer-rocked-by-accusations-of-racist-quotas/.

[25] https://www.theguardian.com/football/2011/may/07/zinedine-zidane-laurent-blanc-france-race

[26] Honigstein, 64.

[27] Honigstein, 133.

[28] Ibid, 224.

[29] Downing.

[30] Adrien Sénécat, “Les Citations Déformées de Karim Benzema Sur l’équipe de France et l’Algérie,” Le Monde.fr, June 2, 2016, https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2016/06/02/les-citations-deformees-de-karim-benzema_4931167_4355770.html.

[31] Lauren B. Wagner, “Choosing Teams,” African Diaspora 11, 1-2 (2019): 179-192, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/18725465-01101003.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Tom Bryant, “Mesut Özil Walks Away from Germany Team Citing ‘Racism and Disrespect,’” The Guardian, July 23, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jul/22/mesut-ozil-retires-german-national-team-discrimination.

[34] Stephan Uersfeld, “Germany’s Ilkay Gundogan: Erdogan Photo Controversy Difficult for Me, Mesut Ozil,” ESPN, June 6, 2018, https://www.espn.com/soccer/germany/story/3518996/germanys-ilkay-gundogan-erdogan-photo-controversy-difficult-for-me-mesut-ozil.

[35] Bryant.

[36] Arne Koch, “The Paradoxical Reality of Racism: German Soccer and the Irreversibility of Multiculturalism,” Taylor & Francis, March 8, 2022, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14660970.2022.2042266?scroll=top&needAccess=true&role=tab&aria-labelledby=full-article.