2010 FIFA World Cup truly International
Watching the FIFA World Cup these days, one is struck by how many times the commentator comments on the fact that a player is playing for the country of his parents' birth or that many players are currently playing for teams that they are citizens of but is not their parents' birth country.
This fact seems to be true more so for countries that have immigration as an issue to begin with. Countries like the UK, USA, and Australia are prime targets for this fact to occur. But the question here is, does it matter at the end of the day whether the players have citizenships of the country they are playing for or not and what difference does it make?
There are other sports where this occurs, it isn't only limited to international football. This issue comes to matter a lot when we talk about league sports. Be it league football in Europe or major league baseball in America.
If one does a quick search of the web it is revealed that one country in particular faces a big problem with what is called 'player drain'. Currently in Australian football, 15 players who are eligible to play for Australia choose to play for their home countries.
The current Australian goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer's parents are of German origin; which was a bit odd because Australia played Germany in their opening game and lost by 4 goals to nil. Even the German team have a Brazilian born player who now has German citizenship; Cacau. The Swedish star Ibrahimovic, has parents who were born in Bosnia and Croatia. The list goes on and on and a strong point comes into view here; the fact that international football truly is international.
If one is to look into the future a time will come when teams will not represent countries any more or if they did there would be so many different nationalities on a team you wouldn't know or care which country it actually was.
Football leagues all around the world but especially in Europe and baseball and other sports in America are faced with the issue of immigrant sports stars every year. A quick scan of every team in the English Premier league has players from all over the globe playing in the tournament. The Serie A, Bundesliga and others in Europe are the same; they are full of very talented international players. If anything it makes the leagues more exciting to watch with all this international talent filled in them.
When we look at this immigration related to sports issue there appear to be both positives and negatives attached to this concept. "People find themselves sharing public spaces and services with people from increasingly diverse cultures. While this presents opportunities in terms of cultural enrichment, risks of misunderstanding and conflict also exist.
Therefore, concepts such as assimilation, acculturation, multiculturalism, cultural diversity and integration form part of wider theoretical perspectives, are subject to interpretation and often used interchangeably," Kennett, Chris. (2005): This concept is very relevant to sports today. When players arrive in a sports league from countries from all across the globe there are issues that the players, coaches and fans have to deal with.
Firstly a player who comes to play in a league that is extremely foreign to them, for example a player from Africa playing in the Premier League, they have to assimilate themselves into the team, the culture and the country very quickly or they risk alienating themselves from their team mates. If a player is not assimilated into the team and the country quickly it might affect team morale, discipline and performance and renders the initial move of bringing the talented immigrant into the team useless.
There are ways around this and it has become so widespread all over the world in so many sports especially football that everyone has accepted it and made it a part of their careers and lives. Sports stars know that at some point in their own careers they might have to move to a foreign country and so they empathise with the newly brought in immigrant talent.
This trend of sports immigration will continue for many years to come and will spread all over the world to many different sports because every sports franchise wants to perform its best and the management will hire the best talent to do the job no matter where they come from.
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