It’s a wet and windy Tuesday night at the Letzigrund Stadium, and a Kosovar midfielder pushes wide to find space behind his opposition full-back, a player born, raised and still playing his football in Frankfurt. From the byline, his pass beats everyone. The Macedonia-born striker it was intended for can’t get a touch on it; neither can the goalkeeper with the Filipino father, the centre-back trained in the Mexico youth system nor their Viking-looking team-mate who arrives last on the scene.
It’s hard to think of two national soccer teams with a greater international flavour than Switzerland and the USA, the two teams which met in Zürich last week. Yet it was a match played in the wake of stinging criticism about the teams’ make-ups and identities, criticism that came from both sides of the Atlantic.
From Florida, Tampa Bay Rowdies coach Thomas Rongen took a swipe at the number of dual-citizen players in the USMNT squad these days. Then, in the next breath, he lined up the side’s German coach, Jürgen Klinsmann, saying only an American can know what what makes an American player tick.
For the Swiss, the criticism came from within. Defender Stephan Lichtsteiner questioned the number of first and second-generation migrants taking to the field for his side. It was a comment that sparked debate in the country, but no sanction, leaving him free to line up against USMNT. Whether that’s a sign of the country’s tolerance or its intolerance is hard to tell.
(Lichtsteiner, it might be worth noting, plays his club football in Italy. Presumably, like most migrants, he left his country to pursue better opportunities for himself and his family abroad.)
“It’s nice to have all these different, multicultural backgrounds,” US midfielder Alejandro Bedoya told The Guardian after Tuesday night’s match. “It’s America. We’re the United States. That’s what we are: a melting pot. It’s not a problem at all, it actually brings some personality to the team.”
His coach says there is strength in diversity. It’s something he hopes will serve his side as well at next World Cup as it did France in 1998 and Germany last year. “Globalisation is just part of our society,” he said in Zürich. “We might be a good example for that.
“Look at where our players are coming from – from Icelandic-Americans to German-Americans to Norwegian-Americans to Colombian-Americans to Mexican Americans – we have all sorts in our group.
“Me personally, I embrace it. I love to get these guys together and work it out and find a common ground (and then) push each other to the highest level possible. We can’t hide it anymore ... it’s part of our society.”
Strength in diversity has certainly worked for the Swiss side, even despite the recent show of internal friction. It is currently ranked 12th in the world, and like the US, made it to the knockout stage of the World Cup in Brazil. This is thanks largely to the efforts of its “secondos” – a local expression for immigrants (that some see as insulting) – like Xherdan Shaqiri, Granit Xhaka and Valon Behrami, all born in Kosovo, or African migrants such as former Manchester City defender Gélson Fernandes.
“It was not so easy, the past, for a lot of our players, but we are proud and happy to be in Switzerland, and to play for the Swiss national team,” Fernandes told the Guardian. “We are thankful to the country for all it gave to us and our families.
“All this diversity with a lot of players coming from abroad, it helps the Swiss football. I hope we can make the country proud as well, altogether.”
There could be other motivations for players to succeed too. “Becoming a football star, (means a player) obviously can feel like he has made good regardless (of what he has had to put up with),” says Moses Iten, a Swiss cultural critic now based in Australia whose grew up in Switzerland with a local father and a foreign mother. “It’s a complex issue, racism, in Switzerland as anywhere.”
In the days leading up to last week’s clash, Klinsmann’s camp was paid a visit by Suzan LeVine, America’s ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Seattleite, who was clearly excited to be welcoming the team to her adopted city, spoke effusively about what USMNT represents.
“What you have with sports is almost representative of what’s happening across the globe, which is this internationalisation,” she said.
“The president and our administration talk a lot about the only way to achieve the objectives that we have and to address the issues that are happening right now is by doing it together.
“These guys represent the sports version of that. That it’s together, from a global standpoint, that we can do better.”
