For migrants, a field of dreams

LONDON — As Syrian migrants continued to arrive at a rate of thousands a day in Munich Hauptbahnhof, some might have contemplated ending their journey with a 20-minute ride on a suburban train to Fröttmaning and officially registering as refugees at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena. Perhaps Bayern already had talent scouts watching the packed trains as they rolled in from Austria, Hungary and Italy. European soccer has been good to migrants. But then migrants have been good for European soccer.



The transformation of clubs’ squads has been accelerated in the last two decades by the European Court’s Bosman ruling in 1995. As soccer has experienced rapid economic growth it has also been remade as an expression of the economic freedom of the European Union. Fans in Munich welcome economic migrants from Africa, Eastern and Southern Europe, and South America who arrive not in crowded trains but in private jets, helicopters or luxury cars to sign multi-million euro contracts. The current Bayern squad contains Austrians, Brazilians, Chileans, Americans, Poles, Frenchmen and Dutchmen.

Meanwhile, the national teams have become an extremely visible expression of the way in which immigration has transformed Western Europe. The German national team has recently include three players of Turkish descent, a defender whose father is from Ghana, another defender whose parents are ethnic Albanians who emigrated from Macedonia, and an attacker of mixed Moroccan-Ghanaian descent — as well as a Polish-born striker who was two when his family fled the collapsing economy of Communist Poland in 1987, on the eve of the Solidarity strikes.