The best game of the World Cup so far was be­tween Ar­genti­na and Cape Verde. Pure class. Gen­uine mag­nif­i­cence. A cham­pi­on team that just would not give in, and a hun­gry for glo­ry team from a small coun­try that does not seem to know how to give up.

And here we are now at the quar­ter fi­nals with the mag­nif­i­cent eight. But as I am watch­ing these games and en­joy­ing the mo­ments of sheer thrill, my mind does not seem able to rest. All the while I am look­ing at foot­ball, I am al­so think­ing of the im­pe­r­i­al en­counter, the colo­nial en­ter­prise and the har­vest of ben­e­fits for the colonis­er na­tions over cen­turies, in­clud­ing in foot­ball.

Even as im­mi­gra­tion is re­gard­ed as a ma­jor prob­lem to­day for every in­dus­tri­alised coun­try with a bor­der, with lit­tle recog­ni­tion of the colo­nial en­counter which set this phe­nom­e­non in process in the first place, so is the World Cup al­so a sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the colo­nial lega­cy. But, struc­tured, or­gan­ised im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy to grow a world foot­ball busi­ness, and to sum­mon the best in the world to play for 60-90,000 at­ten­dees per sta­di­um for each match (on av­er­age 65,000, with sta­dia filled to ca­pac­i­ty) and 175 mil­lion fans, on av­er­age, watch­ing each match at home, with friends, in bars and oth­er venues through­out the tour­na­ment, have made a de­ci­sive dif­fer­ence.

For the 2022 fi­nal in Qatar be­tween Ar­genti­na and France there were 570 mil­lion view­ers. This year, the view­er­ship for the fi­nals is es­ti­mat­ed at 1.8 bil­lion, boost­ed by a new­ly con­quered North Amer­i­can mar­ket. 2022 sta­dia at­ten­dance num­bers have long been sur­passed in 2026.

Ar­genti­na, Bel­gium, Eng­land, France, Mo­roc­co, Nor­way, Spain and Switzer­land have made it to the quar­ter­fi­nals. From to­day through Sat­ur­day, the world will be on foot­ball fire as the top four teams are de­ter­mined.

Bel­gium, Eng­land, France and Spain were lead­ers in the im­pe­r­i­al en­ter­prise and colo­nial ex­pan­sion. Switzer­land was not a colonis­er but be­came cen­tral to the busi­ness of neigh­bour­ing em­pire builders through bank­ing, fi­nance, com­merce through trad­ing hous­es and mer­ce­nar­ies.

Nor­way was nev­er a colonis­er. They were a ter­ri­to­ry un­der Den­mark and Swe­den for a while, but have been ful­ly au­tonomous and in­de­pen­dent since 1905. Ar­genti­na was a colony of Spain yes, but they were a set­tler colony and de­clared in­de­pen­dence since 1816. Mo­roc­co is re­al­ly the on­ly for­mer colony in this se­lect group. In 1956, they gained in­de­pen­dence from both France and Spain.

But look­ing at the eight fi­nal con­tenders, and the in­ter­sec­tion of his­to­ry, geopol­i­tics and glob­al foot­ball tal­ent, one can­not but be mes­merised and stim­u­lat­ed at the fas­ci­nat­ing pic­ture that emerges.

Let’s take Mo­roc­co, a for­mer colony. What we have here is a re­verse re­flec­tion of Eu­ro­pean mi­gra­tion pat­terns. Mo­roc­co us­es FI­FA’s el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules strate­gi­cal­ly to draw heav­i­ly on its vast di­as­po­ra in Eu­rope. Over 70% of the cur­rent Mo­roc­co squad was born and trained in Eu­rope, pri­mar­i­ly in coun­tries like France, Spain, Bel­gium and the Nether­lands. Those from the di­as­po­ra who play for Mo­roc­co have made a con­scious choice to play for their an­ces­tral home­land.

What about France, a coun­try whose colo­nial reach is both wide and deep?

I think it is fair to say France is the un­of­fi­cial tal­ent cap­ture coun­try of the World Cup. The French team is Black, White and North African. Some of its most promi­nent core play­ers grew up in sub­urbs just out­side Paris but their fam­i­ly roots can be traced to for­mer French ter­ri­to­ries like Al­ge­ria, Cameroon, Sene­gal and Mali. A sim­i­lar pat­tern re­peats it­self for Eng­land, Spain and Bel­gium. Some 25% of World Cup play­ers are not born in the coun­try they rep­re­sent. Ar­genti­na tends to have home­grown play­ers with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure.

So, these quar­ter­fi­nals of­fer a kind of stark con­trast. While one might con­cede that Eu­rope dom­i­nates the po­lit­i­cal tax­on­o­my of the tour­na­ment, the ac­tu­al squads on the pitch show that glob­al foot­ball is thor­ough­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed by the move­ment of peo­ple across bor­ders. The end re­sult is the best, most com­pet­i­tive foot­ball pos­si­ble, a grow­ing busi­ness, in­clu­sion, man­aged mi­gra­tion and al­though a lot of tal­ent from the de­vel­op­ing world is pulled to Eu­rope, some gen­uine ef­fort is be­ing made to de­vel­op the game in coun­tries and re­gions in the glob­al South.

It is an im­per­fect sys­tem with a lot of de­fi­cien­cies. But I think the FI­FA ap­proach and busi­ness mod­el be­gins to show a struc­tured way to man­aged mi­gra­tion, mu­tu­al de­vel­op­ment and shared pros­per­i­ty.

It is some­thing that can be stud­ied, tweaked and ap­plied in mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy and glob­al eco­nom­ic strat­e­gy with or­der­ly, shared ben­e­fi­cial ef­fects.