Opinion | Something Remarkable Is Happening in African Football

The prominence of coaches like Cissé comes as African countries’ relationship with their diasporas is changing. There are now millions of African immigrants and their descendants in Europe. From Algerians who moved to France in the 1960s to near-daily arrivals of irregular African migrants in Italy today, Europe has been becoming Blacker for decades.

Even as these groups are integrated — and shape popular culture, politics, the economy and, of course, sports — many still maintain some allegiance to their ancestral homes and go back to visit regularly. send remittances; they follow Moroccan or Cameroonian news as closely as they would in Marrakesh or Yaoundé. (Social media cements this relationship even further.)

But there is another important change underway, reflective of the rising power and relevance of Africa to Europe. African players are increasingly on the center stage of world football. Though African players have a long history in Europe, it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that they began to star in the top leagues there.

At first, they were signed for their “speed” and “natural strength.” But coaches like José Mourinho and Roberto Mancini also appreciated their skill, leadership and smarts. Players like Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, John Obi-Mikel, Samuel Eto’o and Yaya Touré became global stars by the first decade of the 21st century. Sadio Mané of Senegal was a key part of Liverpool F.C.’s attack for years (and the team struggled after his departure for Bayern Munich). His national teammate, the defender Kalidou Koulibaly, captained Napoli before he moved to Chelsea.

Today, a majority of Africans — like most football fans across the world — follow the top European leagues. Football in this way cultivates a sort of pan-African identity, even if it is only for 90 minutes at a time. And there is a kind of continental solidarity that emerges for many African fans during the World Cup. If your home country’s team has made it, you first support it; when it gets eliminated, you support whichever African country is doing well. As the novelist Chimamanda Adichie put it during the 2010 World Cup, your “nationalism expands its boundaries as your country loses.”

I feel old writing this, but I have to admit that when I was a kid in South Africa, the first team I supported in the World Cup was Brazil. Partly, that’s because the first tournament I cared about was in 1982, and one of Brazil’s stars was Sócrates, a proudly political, anti-dictatorship midfielder who became my idol.

But there was another reason the squad appealed to me and my friends back then: Brazil was a largely Black team that played among the football giants. African teams, meanwhile, usually showed poor form and were quickly eliminated. In the years that followed, as African teams began to have more success, drawing on their diasporas in Europe, many of us began to cheer for teams from the continent instead.