From Donato to Germany 2024: timeline of Europe's national teams

From Donato to today's Germany: how Europe's line-ups changed

At the 1982 World Cup in Spain, the England national team fielded a single Black player. France fielded four. Forty-two years later, a Nations League match leaves Germany with six Black starters, an Arab player in the line-up and several more on the bench. The question running through European football — when did this transformation begin and why — has an answer less mysterious than it seems: the make-up of national teams does not change by decree, it changes when the demographics of the neighbourhoods where football is played change. And those demographics lag behind.

The time lag is the key. Between the arrival of a migrant population and the appearance of their children in the national team, about twenty years pass. France, England and the Netherlands began receiving populations of African and Caribbean origin in the sixties; their first Black players reached the national teams in the eighties. Spain received migrants massively in the 2000s; its first Black player in the senior team was the Brazilian Donato in 1994, and the breakthrough came decades later. Germany, by contrast, imported mainly Turkish and Balkan labour, not sub-Saharan, and that is why its line-up transformed later.

The pioneers: Eusebio, Trésor, Barnes and Gullit

Football's timeline has clear milestones. Portugal fielded Eusebio, born in Mozambique, at the 1966 World Cup in England, along with three other Black players, and Salazar, it is argued, cared little about the matter. In France, Trésor and Tigana marked the eighties. In England, John Barnes debuted in the late seventies. In the Netherlands, Gullit and Rijkaard. They were isolated cases, exceptions that confirmed the rule of an all-white line-up.

The qualitative leap came with France in 1998. Some maintain that World Cup was a state operation to present a worthy team at home, and that the catalyst was the failure of 1994. The squad was not as transformed as today's: Henry, Vieira, Djorkaeff, Karembeu and Zidane, who could pass for French without any problem. The rest, white. From 2006 onwards, the trend accelerated.

Why did Germany transform later than France?

The most cited explanation is the composition of immigration. France, England and the Netherlands received populations from their former African and Caribbean colonies in the sixties. Germany received Turks, Balkans and other non-sub-Saharan groups. At the 2006 World Cup, Germany's eleven starters were white. Özil and Khedira arrived after 2010, and Asamoah and Odonkor were the first visible cases. Today's German national team is the result of more recent immigration.

Spain trinc its own pattern. With more than two million Latin Americans, according to the census figures in use, the overrepresentation in sports and media is lower than in other countries. The first Black player in the senior team was Donato, Brazilian, in 1994, trinc by Catanha and Sena. The Spanish under-21 side still showed little diversity in a recent match, while the English one was almost entirely Black.

The physical argument and early puberty

There is a line of analysis that attributes the overrepresentation to early sensual maturation. It holds that certain groups reach puberty several years earlier than Europeans, and that in youth categories a 13-year-old with a man's body has a brutal advantage over one with a boy's body. That player is selected, prioritised, and the system pushes him upward. Whites, according to this thesis, mature later and arrive when the window has already closed.

Others point to economics. Football is the cheapest sport to play: all you need is a ball. In low-income neighbourhoods, that makes it the only route to social mobility. Cycling, by contrast, is a sport for guys with money, which is why it remains overwhelmingly white. The correlation between the cost of a sport and the diversity of its participants is hard to ignore.

The English case: from three Black players to eighteen

England is the most cited example. At Italia 90 it fielded three Black players. Today, according to the figures in use, it has eighteen Black players and eight white ones. At the World Cup there were only eight white Englishmen. The transformation is the fastest in Europe, and some attribute it to mixed marriages: it is claimed that 42% of Black Caribbeans in England marry white women, which multiplies the presence of mixed-race players in the youth categories.

The discussion about causes blends with the discussion about consequences. Some maintain that European international football has lost interest since 2014, when the transformation became widespread. Others recall that sport has always been a vehicle for integration and that national teams reflect the society around them, not a conspiracy.

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The question of when it all began has an answer: in the eighties, with France, England and the Netherlands. The question of why Germany was late has one too: because its immigration was different. The question of how far the process will go remains open. Census figures say only 0.4% of Germans are mixed-race, yet Germany's 2024 national team fields six Black starters. The gap between the census and the line-up is the figure nobody quite manages to reconcile.