The ethnic and racial mix of teams is a tribute to the past half-century of liberal immigration policies in many formerly very monochromatic places. Photo by Fran Santiago/Getty Images

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Donald Trump got lots of grief for leaning on FIFA President Gianni Infantino to overturn the red-card suspension of star United States soccer player Folarin Balogun even as he himself was trying to red-card “birthright citizenship,” which is how Balogun, who spent only the first two months of his life in the U.S., got his citizenship after airlines wouldn’t let his very pregnant mother board a return flight to England at the end of a U.S. visit in 2001.

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Hypocrisy, thy name is politics, so a little double-think in the national team’s interest is hardly shocking. Besides, in principle there’s nothing wrong with living by the birthright citizenship rules even as you try to change them — even if, in practice, Trump is hardly a stickler for living by rules.

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War is said to be “long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” Many of us have always found soccer/football to be similar: lots of passing the ball back and forth — there are literally hundreds of passes per game — occasionally interrupted by something thrilling. Often the thrill/boredom ratio is painfully low. In this World Cup it does seem to have been generally higher.

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For proud neoliberals such as myself, there has been the added enjoyment that the whole thing is a celebration of globalism and a demonstration, as some of us have always argued, that liberal internationalism isn’t really in conflict with nationalism.

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The national teams themselves are a tribute to liberal immigration policies. The red-carded American Balogun could have played for England or Nigeria in addition to the U.S. He did play for England in under-17 competition. His current professional team is Monaco, where, for tax reasons, many stars and ex-stars presumably have residence.

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In their professional careers, players don’t necessarily go to the highest bidder. But they do play in a world market. Canada’s Alphonso Davies is employed by Bayern Munich, Jonathan David by Juventus in Turin. Players naturally want to play for the best teams. Fans naturally want their teams to get the best players, wherever they’re from. Football is now a very competitive global market — though it wasn’t until liberalizations in the 1970s in the U.K. and the 1990s in Europe allowed non-nationals to move much more easily.

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In this World Cup, according to Reuters, only nine countries fielded players born only at home (including Brazil and Spain). Curaçao had 25 players born outside that tiny island. Cape Verde, which made an astonishing run, taking Argentina to extra time in the round of 32, had 14, maybe the most famous being Roberto “Pico” Lopes, who was born in Ireland and plays for the Shamrock Rovers. Ireland itself not having qualified for the World Cup, many Irish fans transferred their loyalty to Cape/Cabo Verde.

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Canada had seven players not born here, the U.S. six.