gee, I dunno, have you looked at a map recently?

Specifically, Los Angeles, California (hint, hint) where the largest community of Mexican’s outside of Mexico City live. It’s only a few hours drive pass San Diego *cough* to get to the Border to tijuana in Baja California.
Are you surprised when recent Scot emigres in London support their national team instead of England?
The bulk of Irish immigration started after the potato famine, which was in the 19th century.
Mexicans have always lived in the US, but them majority have been here 1 or 2 generations.
Or maybe we are overanalyzing it a bit much and it really has to do with the fact that US has a hard time beating anyone other than Mexico and mexico occasionally takes down Brazil, Holland, and other giants.
Plus, The United States and its constitution espouses the idea of a multicultural society even more than Sweden. We’re basically the model for it.
I think a better question is “Chicanos support the Mexican NT and the Poles the Polish team and the Nigerians the screaming eagles and what? You gotta problem with that?”. When the match is over and were all done screaming obscenities in our native languages, we’re all one big happy dysfunctional family.

Yeah it’s funny. Ireland is not threatening. The image of Ireland represents rural America and validates oldfashioned American values. Mexico represents the other. Something that can potentially undermine those values.

About Surinamese footballers in Holland. Unlike the new groups of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants, Surinamese people have more or less been succesfully assimilated to Dutch society, just like people of Indonesian heritage. That has everything to do with the shared colonial history. Both groups have added a lot to Dutch football, the Indonesian contribution is often overlooked by the simple fact that they look less coloured, but it has been almost as big as the contribution of the Surinamese (Van Bronckhorst, even Roy Makaay has Indonesian roots).

But even with this succesfully assimilated group there have been problems, as the infamous ‘Kabel’ incident showed. The Dutch team in 1996 got divided along racial lines and their chances at Euro ‘96 were ruined beacuse of it (They got hammered 4-1 by England). The interesting thing is that there were no such troubles with the Surinamese footballers of the generation before (Gullit, Rijkaard), who were seamlessly integrated and felt completely Dutch. The ‘Kabel’ incident was an almost overlooked sign that integration in Holland wasn’t going as well as everyone at the time thought.

With that as a backdrop it’s even more interesting to see how things will turn out with the integration of Turkish and Moroccan footballers in Dutch teams.

The apparant irony is ofcourse that whilst Dutch and French teams, both club and country, have always had that multicultural look. German teams often look..well, German. That’s visible in the media as well. Turn on German television and you won’t see a lot of people of colour, when in France and Holland they are much better represented. An explanation can be found in the respective societies. France and Holland’s cultural elite have embraced multiculturalism in the last couple of decades, and multiculturalism is what has ran into problems lately (or it’s, as some would say, bankrupt. I’m not one of them). Germany is a far more segregated society. When you’re born a minority in Germany, you know you can be a succes or a failure, but you will never be German. The cultural gap is often simply too large. In France and Holland on the other hand, someone from a minority is, on some subconscious level, promised equal chances and smooth integration, when in reality society turns out to be far more segregated. That’s what causes people to feel disappointed and when people don’t know what identity works out best for them, it leaves them confused. And this confusion in turn is what makes more extreme versions of one of those identities attractive. These extreme identities in turn cause more tension in society. That’s the downward spiral. It has been in effect for several years now, and it’s hard to see where it’ll go. Ofcourse this is an overly simplified and exaggerated view of something that’s happening on many other levels, but I think that if you want to interpret what’s happening in the societies mentioned, understanding this downward spiral is the key.

Another note on identity and the international game. Why are Chicanos rooting for Mexico a national problem while Irish folk for Ireland are not?

I can say this about the Afellay case:
- there was formal pressure from his club & the media to join Holland
- a more informal pressure to join Morocco (branded a traitor by many now)
- the main arguments to join Holland were that he grew up there and that Holland has a bigger chance of advancing in big tournaments
- a reason for him not to join Morocco was the perceived mismanagement by their FA

So an interesting mixture of motives (money, nationality, power, feeling) which are worthy of more research.

He is bound to get more call-ups but I doubt if there’s a spot for him in the starting XI right away with Van der Vaart, Sneijder, Seedorf, Landzaat, De Zeeuw, Maduro…maybe after Euro 2008.

Yıldırım appears to have been a fluke. Still only 24 he’s looking to revive his career in Turkey.

I am familiar with the Dutch players you mentioned (way too much Football Manager) and actually thought about including them in the post (I ended up just focusing on German Turks because they are so numerous). How do you think the situation of Moroccans in Holland compares with Turks in Germany?

I’m surprised that Yildrim hasn’t played more for the Oranje. I remember seeing some clips of him and he looked fantastic. Does Afellay look likely to be called up to the national team any time soon?

In particular two youngsters from PSV Eindhoven stand out. There’s Ismaïl Aissati, a talented yet frail midfielder, who has not yet decided on his international future. The older Ibrahim Afellay has chosen to play for the Dutch squad after long consideration. A

Mbark Boussoufa, currently with Anderlecht but formed by Ajax and Chelsea, has chosen the Moroccan 11 however.

Finally, a rather tragic example would be the Turk UÄŸur Yildirim. Once a promising player known for his free kick taking, his career for the Dutch ended after just 30 minutes as a sub.