Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
France was led to their World Cup by star players who could have easily chosen to play for another team, but they chose France anyway.
We can wonder what would have happened to the French team (would they have won the World Cups) if Zidane had chosen to play for Algeria and Mbappe for Cameroon or Algeria, but we'll never know.
France is a big nation, with a large number of registered footballers and many professional clubs, but their main stars still came from the diaspora, thanks to their colonial history.
Yes, I forgot about Henry, thanks for the reminder, but I actually wanted to mention their best players, with the biggest contributions to the World Cups.
Am an African but I don't really like talks like French players should come back and play from there dissent because their parents was born there, it doesn't really make sense to me when this people where not given anything from there home countries, they were trained in France and opportunities where open to them just by being a France Nationale and you want them to go back to play for Africa ? Those that goes back, kudos to them but am of the opinion that they should stick to the country that raised them
WOW I didn't think my original comment would cause such a discussion and so many different opinions and comments.
We, in Croatia, have often had such a situation where key players in our national team were born and raised abroad but still decided to play for Croatia and not for the countries in which they were born and raised, and even started playing football.
We have many such examples, such as the Kovac brothers, Simunic, Seric, all the way to Rakitic.
All of these were key players in the Croatian national team who enabled it to achieve such great successes in recent years.
Did they play for Croatia for money? Certainly not because Croatia cannot be compared to Germany, Switzerland or Australia.
They chose Croatia out of their own hearts and upbringing, because that's how their parents raised them.
So, there are actually many examples of someone playing for the country of origin of their parents and not for the country where they were born and raised, Croatia is a very good example of that.
The more important question is why is this possible for Croatia and not for Algeria or Cameroon? Because there are precedents (and many examples) when it comes to Croatia, but not when it comes to some African countries in relation to France, for example, and that is a legitimate question that needs an answer.
