In the World Cup, nationalism dies hard

If there’s anything the World Cup has imparted thus far, it’s that blood isn’t thicker than water. When it comes down to it, nationalism is largely a matter of personal preference.

Sure, you have the 23-man squad that makes up the national team, the crowd of ardent fans decked out in their country’s colors, the various national flags paraded around the stadium, and the markedly different melodies of each national anthem. You also have the whole point of the FIFA World Cup, which is to pit country against country in a battle royale of football supremacy. After all, there’s nothing like the prospect of competition to get the blood tingling, to divide the world into neat little boxes. Obviously, you’re supposed to be on your own country’s side.

And yet, in a world brought closer together by freedom of movement, the division isn’t as clean-cut as most would like to think.

Take Diego Costa, for example. The Brazilian-born 25-year-old striker is one of the best in the world, a star of club Atletico Madrid, and now the World Cup’s “most hated” player for choosing to represent his adopted home of Spain over his native land, Brazil. This bit of news is nothing new: Brazilian football players are a veritable national export, and those with dual citizenship change allegiances all the time. But he was approached by both countries in a World Cup year: Brazil with her heart in her hands and Spain still aglow from its 2010 win. Of course, any of the two would have been a flattering choice, but in the spirit of nationhood and patriotism which the World Cup supposedly fosters, most would say that the “correct” choice should have been Brazil. Woe unto Diego Costa then. While the striker has been branded as a traitor by his own, it might be remembered that despite his Brazilian roots, he was never the recipient of national adoration in his hometown — until he moved to Spain.

Then there’s 19-year-old Adnan Januzaj who just recently got caught in a four-sided tug-of-war over who he would actually play for — Albania, Serbia, Belgium, and even England hedging their bets. The lanky mid-fielder is Belgium-born, but descended from immigrant parents whose homeland of Kosovo remains disputed by Serbia and Albania. England, although unqualified to lay any claim on him, comes into the picture for the sole reason that Januzaj was a promising young star in the English club Manchester United. In the end, Januzaj eventually picked Belgium, despite strong speculation that he would choose his father’s home country of Albania.

While Diego Costa and Adnan Januzaj are good examples of how porous the frontiers are between nations, no recent football story illustrates the futility and importance of nationalism quite like the Boateng brothers.

Kevin-Prince Boateng and Jerome Boateng were born in Germany to a Ghanian father and German mother, who share pretty much everything except their football teams. For the second time in World Cup history, the two brothers faced each other from opposite ends of the pitch: Kevin-Prince playing as midfielder for Ghana, and Jerome as central defender for Germany.

The picture of two brothers going head-to-head on the world stage may seem to undermine notions of family, national identity, and unity… But then again, why should it? In the context of increasing globalization, the brothers play for their respective teams because of offers that appealed to them, and not for any lack of appreciation or loyalty to the countries they came from.

Multicultural teams are fast becoming the norm among coaches and players alike. Interestingly, if a no-immigrant policy were to be imposed, most European teams would lose a third of their best players. Racism may continue to swim not far below the underlying current of international football (English fans have been known to blame England’s lackluster performance on the team’s “bloody foreigners”), but for the most part, the bridge between nations has never been so short.

In the Philippines, our own Azkals stand as testament to this multiculturalism. Less than half the players are homegrown talents, with the rest being half-European, half-Filipino athletes recruited from overseas. Yet we proudly cheer for them, all the same. While a local like Chieffy Caligdong can undoubtedly hold his own against larger, international opponents, without reinforcement from the likes of the Younghusbands, for example, the Philippines would be hard-pressed to even qualify for the Asian Football Cup.

On a similar note, the fact that we have local fans with such an affinity for other teams competing in the World Cup, drives home the point that nationhood truly is a liquid concept. After all, imagined affinities are as much a social construct as racial differences. I’m a Chinese-Filipino, but I’m cheering for Brazil, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan.

Nationalism is a double-edged sword; one side can bring a people together in unity, the other can be complicit with  racism — privileging one group of people over the other, based on prejudices you can invent yourself.

In the end, if blind nationalism becomes a hindrance to fostering the democratic ideal behind world sports, then the lesson we can take from this year’s World Cup bears repeating: leave your nationalism at the front door.