Racist attacks against France's national team, a former Spanish prime minister denying French players their sense of belonging, harassment at border entry for teams from Iran, Senegal, or Morocco: the current World Cup shows that racism in sport is by no means a thing of the past.

Few sports connect the world as much as football – and few are so deeply intertwined with colonial rule. From Arthur Wharton, the first known African professional player in 19th-century England, through the restrictive club policies in the French colonies, to the independence movements of the 1960s: the history of African football is a history of control, resistance, and self-assertion. Historian Claire Nicolas explains how closely migration, politics, and sport are linked – and how this history still resonates today.

How Colonialism Globalised Football

The global spread of football is closely tied to colonial power relations. How can the history of football be told from this perspective?

Claire Nicolas: Looking at the British Empire, we see that the first African players in Britain already existed in the 19th century. A player named Arthur Wharton, a Ghanaian, played in the British championship in the 1880s. Today in Europe we often hear talk about "diverse teams," but that actually points to a much longer history.

In France too, from the early 20th century, especially in the 1930s, there were players from North Africa in the French championship. So this has existed for over a century, and it's also connected to how the sport itself came to Africa and was played there.

How European Football Profited from Africa

In what way?

Nicolas: We see this especially in West Africa, where the game was brought mainly by those who traveled abroad to work or study, often at elite schools. When they came back, they brought it with them, believing it could be a good opportunity for young people. They promoted it, founded leagues and clubs. So African football developed from the very beginning in a very international way – always linked to travel to London, to Paris, to the colonial metropoles.

I think this is especially important right now: in France we recently read a lot about how Kylian Mbappé was called "not French" and subjected to racist abuses during the current World Cup. Yet French and African football have always been intertwined. Many people are "Afropean"– European citizens with African heritage.

At the same time, this history reflects a deeply unequal relationship: the colonial metropole as the center where the biggest, wealthiest clubs sit, able to afford high salaries—which simply isn't the case in West Africa.

Why Colonial Powers Feared African Footballers

Looking back further. Was there also a time when colonizers banned football in the colonies because they saw it as "the white man's game"?

Nicolas: That depended on the respective colonial legislation and on what the colonial authorities understood sport to be. At British schools, for example, football was strongly promoted for the sons of the elite so they would adopt a certain "British ethos" and behave like proper British boys. In the French colonies it wasn't valued in the same way. There was the racist prejudice that African men might not properly understand the game or weren't "smart enough" for it. There was also a fear that the sport could awaken dangerous ideas – because on the pitch everyone is equal, and if a Black team beat a white one, that could plant certain ideas. That's why there was fairly strict legislation in French West Africa: in Côte d'Ivoire, for example, a sports club couldn't be run by an African but had to be under the supervision of a colonial ruler. That had real effects on the development of sports clubs there. In British West Africa, on the other hand, especially in Ghana, Africans could already found their own clubs in the 1920s – such clubs sprang up all along the Atlantic coast.

Systematic Suppression of Women's Football

Was this kind of control limited to men, or were there similar restrictions on women during the same period?

Nicolas: Interestingly, yes. In the same period there was also a strong backlash against women's football across Europe. It had actually flourished during the First World War, when European women worked in factories and played in their free time. But when the men returned, there was no room left for it, not enough facilities. In England, this led to a nationwide ban in 1921, that stayed until 1971, the game being considered unsuitable for women.

This development wasn't an isolated case: the early World Cups too—especially the one held in Mussolini's fascist Italy – inscribed the sport with masculinity and nationalism. That had been true since the very origins of FIFA and football clubs.

And in African countries?

Nicolas: As early as the beginning of the 1940s, we can find traces of women playing football in British West Africa. But this was rare enough for this to be mentioned in newspapers. And British colonial officials disapproved. In 1950 Nigeria, the British colonial administration extended the ban on women’s football. The game was revived in the 1970s.

What role did football play from 1960 onward, in the so-called Year of Africa, when 18 African colonies gained independence from their colonial powers all at once?

Nicolas: In the 1960s many African heads of state tried to build their own championships. After the colonial period, they wanted to ensure African players were part of a new, homegrown competition. It was a decade full of hope, as these countries became independent and built new states – sport was meant to be "Africanized." In the 1960s, heads of States like Mobutu in Congo or Nkrumah in Ghana, upheld a protectionist approach towards football. Ghana's first president, insisted, for instance, that one had to live in Ghana in order to play for the national team. That shaped African football for decades to come: even the Africa Cup of Nations restricted how many Europe-based players could be part of a national squad (two overseas players). This rule was passed in 1965 and only lifted again in 1982.

Football as a Weapon Against Apartheid

In what way was sport also a tool in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle?

Nicolas: The African heads of state of the 1960s knew very well that sport is political. They organized boycotts and helped get South Africa excluded from international sports organizations. Sport was central to advancing a pan-Africanist agenda. It was only later, in the 1980s, that a shift occurred: because of the economic crises and structural adjustment programs of that time, a new era of intensive, labor-migration-driven football movement began.

African Talent, Global Success

Football likes to present itself as a bridge between cultures, a game that unites the world. Can it fight racism?

Nicolas: That's an important question, because football means so much to so many people worldwide. Think of France in 1998, when it became world champion for the first time with a team led by Zinédine Zidane. Back then people chanted "Zizou Président" on the Champs-Élysées. That was the golden era of "Black-Blanc-Beur," a slogan that served both as a political statement for multiculturalism and integration and as a symbol for the French national football team of the 1990s. At the time there was a lot of positive talk about France as a melting pot. But just three years later, on September 11, 2001, the mood toward migration in France changed completely with the terrorist attacks.

So there are sometimes moments when football really does become a place where people meet and share something. But those moments are fleeting. And it's simply wrong to say football is apolitical.