First and foremost, this is my background to the mushrooming talented black football players in the French national team.
The French, like other powerful Europeans countries were scrambling for power across the world. During the industrial revolution, most European countries were out in search of raw materials and cheap labour, and the only way to fulfil their demands, they had to find and set up colonies.
African continent became the biggest victim of circumstances and the lion’s share by the most powerful European countries. Africa countries became scrambled for, partitioned and colonised by the British, German, Dutch, Portuguese, French etc.
In the process, European countries were able to attain colonies. In order to facilitate the acquisition process and assimilate Africans, they introduced European cultures mainly in form of language and religion. This is the very reason most English speaking Africans migrate to English speaking nations such as the UK and the same is true with French and Portuguese speakers.
To answer the question, the French national team has many black football players because of immigration or their ancestors came from the French speaking colonies mostly in West Africa. France colonised Algeria, Niger, Tunisia, Cameroon, Morocco, Senegal, Gabon, Chad, Congo, Mauritania, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea etc. If you realise all those countries are French speaking and some of the people are Catholics due to French influence. The French seems to have acquired more colonies as compared to fellow imperialists.
When people migrate, they mostly head to countries with shared values or beliefs. For example they will want to go to places were they can understand and speak the language or practice the same religion.
Examples of the notable French-African football players, past and present
Zinadine Zidane — Algeria
Patrice Evra — Senegal
Kylian Mbappe — Cameroon & Algeria
Paul Pogba — Guinea
Ngolo Kante — Mali
Karim Benzema — Algeria
Bacary Sagna — Senegal
Kurt Zouma — Central Frican Republic
Presnel Kimpembe — Congo & Hait
Patrick Vieira — Senegal
Etc all hail from West Africa
You can see that the above African football talents hail from French or former French colonies. This is the similar story in England, the likes Raheem Sterling, Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rahford, Bukayo Saka, Kylie Walkers etc have ancestors or parents who migrated from current or former British empires. In otherwords, there’s or there was a high link between colonisation and people immigration.
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