'European when you win, immigrant when you lose': Dutch players suffer racist attacks after elimination from the World Cup

Summerville and Memphis Depay celebrate the Netherlands' goal in the World Cup
Annegret Hilse/Reuters
Netherlands national team players suffered racist attacks after their elimination from the football World Cup this week, which marked yet another regrettable episode in European football.
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Among the main targets were Justin Kluivert, Quinten Timber and Crysencio Summerville, who wasted their charges and declared the early elimination of the Dutch team against Morocco. They started to receive a series of racist comments, including emojis and monkey gifs, on their social media profiles, which made them limit the comments on their posts.
The Dutch federation repudiated the episode in which "several players were treated in a racist and discriminatory way" and stated that racism and discrimination have no place in any space in society.
The Dutch incident is not unprecedented, quite the contrary, they have happened with a certain frequency in recent years when a European team is eliminated from a competition important.
It happened with the English trio of immigrant descent Saka, Rashford and Sancho, when they missed penalties in the final of the 2021 Euro Cup;
Also with Kylian Mbappé, who considered retiring from the national team in 2021 after missing a penalty that eliminated France in the 2021 Euro against Switzerland;
Among the insults that the entire team ends up being subjected to, the most insulting serious attacks are directed at black players and children of immigrants - the case of Timber and Summerville and dozens of other athletes in this World Cup.
This trend has been consolidated in recent decades with the advance of the extreme right and the anti-immigration movement in European countries, and ended up creating a phenomenon "European when they win, immigrants when they lose", as Professor Adriano Freixo, professor of International Relations at UFF and author of "Football - the other side of the game."
Different from the stereotypical European, these black players and children of immigrants are differentiated from their colleagues in this moment of criticism and become the "scapegoat" at that moment so that the population gives vent to their prejudices.
"When you want to look for a scapegoat, someone who you will blame for all the problems in society, the easiest thing is to look for someone who is different (...) The extreme right uses difference to build hatred [for immigrants], which is the basis of their speech. They can only grow politically based on this friend and enemy dichotomy", said Freixo.
At the same time, black players and children of immigrants are increasingly appearing in European teams and are among the biggest highlights in some of them - this is the case of Mbappé in France, Jeremy Doky in Belgium, Bukayo Saka in England, Memphis Depay in the Netherlands and even Lamine Yamal in Spain.
In the French team, these players are more than 75% of the squad for this World Cup. In the case of the eliminated Netherlands, half of the players are children of immigrants. See the infographic below.
This phenomenon of "internationalization" of European teams will not change anytime soon and will only increase, Maurício Santoro, PhD in Political Science and Sociology from Iuperj, told g1. What is up to the federations is to create a positive mentality about this, and for the population of European countries to get used to it.
"Football reflects these social tensions resulting from immigration and often takes them to another audience, which perhaps would not engage in this type of debate. (...) Therefore, it also ends up becoming an element of political, ideological and social dispute", stated Santoro.
According to Santoro, descendants of immigrants are increasingly gaining space in European teams because football is one of the most meritocratic spaces in society.
Increasingly anti-immigration, Europe will support children of immigrants in the World Cup
Infographic shows how many players are children of immigrants in the squads of the main European teams for the World Cup in 2026.
Juan Silva/Arte g1

Source: G1