In a terrain dominated by nations, the 2026 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup was interesting for a variety of reasons. I went to two matches: a pool-play round between Norway and Iraq and a round of 32 game between Germany and Paraguay. The experience was magical and the cultural ethos brought to the stadium by supporters of the teams provided a quick window into the love possible through sporting pleasure. Yet, there were some silences, absences, and politics. Of course, we know the horrible politics of FIFA and its current president, Gianni Infantino, along with the shutting down of political speech, the disturbing friendship with US President Trump, and the ways the tournament favored certain nations.
In this environment of joy, cultural celebrations, and politics, the World Cup offered some bright moments like the incredible run by Cabo Verde (the smallest nation to ever advance in the World Cup) and the unexpected and beautiful run by Egypt. However, there was also a certain silence at the same time small nations from the Global South excelled in the 2026 World Cup. What about Kurdistan? With all the Kurdish players across various teams, such as on the Iraqi and German teams as well as others, there was no mention of the Kurdish heritage of some of these brilliant players on the pitch. At the Norway vs. Iraq game, I saw two Kurdish flags in the crowd with thousands of Iraqi flags.
To interrogate this silence and foreground the Kurdish voices maneuvering through this complicated political field, I got a chance to speak with Meran Abdullah. Meran Abdullah is 48 years old and came as a teenager from the Kurdish region of Iraq, known as Bashur, to North Dakota as a refugee. As a young child, he lost his parents and family members because of Iraq despot Saddam Hussein’s brutal chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds in the mid-1980s. Meran and the remaining members of his family fled from Iraq to refugee camps in Turkey. From Turkey, he and his family members were resettled in Fargo, North Dakota.
As a teenager in Fargo, Meran Abdullah played soccer and led Fargo High School to a state title. Furthermore, Meran received national recognition and was a “Gatorade Circle of Champions” awardee. After these incredible accomplishments in North Dakota, his family moved to Nashville. He is now active in the local soccer scene and loves soccer. Thus, Meran was the perfect person to interview and discuss the World Cup.
When we began our conversation, Meran immediately intimated that with more than 30-40 million Kurds across the globe, there are many great Kurdish players and teams who do not receive enough recognition. He added, “There was a German guy who is Kurdish and scored a lot of goals.” Meran then discussed the soccer brilliance and scoring proliferation of the German player of Kurdish heritage, Deniz Undav, and how he was relegated to playing only a half instead of an entire game. Undav publicly identifies as Kurdish, and he celebrates with Kurdish dances after goals, such as in the playoff game against Paraguay. Meran also named Merchas Doski, a prominent defender for the Iraqi national team.
With such excellent Kurdish players on the German team as well as the Iraqi team, there is little mention by the media of their Kurdish identity. For a stateless community spread across Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey with large diasporas in Europe and across the world, the silence around identifying stateless players is deafening. There is a much longer history of passion for soccer in Kurdish communities, which I investigated and wrote about in my forthcoming book, This Is Kurdistan: Place-Making and Cultural Insistence in Kurdish America (University of Texas Press).
During our conversation, Meran shared his earliest experiences of playing soccer in Iraq with little governmental support for the soccer infrastructure in Bashur. At this moment, while laughing with joy radiating in his eyes, he said, “We had no fields. We set up rocks on the fields as makeshift goal lines.” With such happy nostalgic remembrance, Meran shared, “we didn’t have leather balls and could not afford it,” while laughing, he added, “we molded cooking oil containers as balls. We loved playing soccer so much we would play with plastic.”
For Kurdish communities that I got to know in the United States, especially the Bashur Kurds in Nashville, they played soccer during their time in refugee camps and in the site of resettlement in the United States. Soccer is a rich part of Kurdish cultural tradition. Thus, when I asked him about what it meant to see nearly 15 Kurdish players play across various national teams at the FIFA World Cup, Meran Abdullah firmly stated, “It gives me so much confidence, it is never too late to play soccer and try out for teams.” In fact, his son saw these Kurdish players excel at the World Cup and is now trying out for various soccer club teams locally in Nashville. Plus, Meran said that seeing the Kurdish flag at these tournaments along with the Kurdish players encourages continued Kurdish claims to soccer as part of their cultural tradition. It is a source of joy and affirmation of one’s roots, even when Kurds live without their own nation-state.
While these Kurdish players at the World Cup are recognizable to the larger Kurdish community across the globe, these players are not always recognizable to non-Kurdish soccer audiences. This is because of the intentional and national silencing of Kurdish heritage. As we discussed this more, Meran Abdullah explained, “Turkey doesn’t want to represent Kurdish identities on the team,” and alluded to the longer history of bans on the Kurdish language and violence against Kurdish communities in Turkey. He added, “Iran probably has some Kurdish players; however, there is pressure on Kurdish players not to disclose their identity. They cannot represent their name and heritage.” Such disclosure could result in being rejected from the team, thus leaving Kurdish soccer players without the opportunity to take part in something they love so much.
This worry about disclosing one’s Kurdish identity is part of a larger structure of exclusion and racism, in and out of soccer spaces. Part of this exclusion infiltrates FIFA. For example, Meran Abdullah referenced the silence of FIFA’s media apparatus on the Kurdish heritage of these players, only recognizing the nation they play for. Part of this is the capitalistic nature of global sport and the way nations pour money into FIFA to allow for only particular representations of themselves.
This type of silence and exclusion shifts from the global scale to the local. Even though the city of Nashville recognized the city of Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq as their sister city, there are other types of silence and refusal. For example, Meran shared with me an incident when he attended a Major League Soccer game in Nashville: “One time I tried to sneak the Kurdish flag into the Nashville stadium,” but the flag was confiscated. While a variety of other professional and national flags flew at the stadium, the Kurdish flag was seen as out of place.
Furthermore, as refugee communities and some immigrant communities arrive with little money, they do not have access to play soccer. Playing soccer in the United States is expensive, especially youth soccer with all the fees it requires. He reflected on his experience trying to play in public parks: “We never had our own place and sometimes we were kicked out of public parks.” Soccer with its own level of meritocracy and joy were not always accessible to everyone.
While discussing a wide variety of topics, I asked Meran Abdullah what FIFA could do to support Kurdish communities and soccer globally. He gave me three concrete ways that FIFA could support Kurds:
- “Have Kurdish names and Kurdish heritage mentioned during coverage of FIFA games.”
- Have FIFA and soccer conglomerates to send their agents and scouts to the Kurdish regions in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Since there is little infrastructure for soccer in Kurdish regions, helping co-build the infrastructure would open ventures for Kurds to have access to something that is part of their cultural practice. It would also increase the number of young Kurdish girls and boys playing soccer.
- “Mention the names of Kurdish cities” with vibrant soccer cultures that produce soccer stars. He discussed how there are Kurdish teams that have won the championships within Iraq but are not recognized by the global media. “The city of Zakho, which is found in northern Iraq,” he noted, “was nominated and later won [the FIFA’s fan award in December 2025] as the best audience and [community] of soccer lovers from all over the world.” He was frustrated that FIFA didn’t mention this even one time during the FIFA World Cup games, even though they awarded Zakho soccer club fans the previous year. These are important and heartfelt stories. When these points are not mentioned, it does not allow the larger soccer audience to recognize the love of soccer in various parts of the globe. While stories about the players and teams are so crucial to creating sentimental attachments to the World Cup, FIFA could do more to showcase the vibrant soccer cultures of stateless communities.
Naming soccer in Kurdish communities is vital to addressing one set of joys and pleasures that exist within their cultural practices. The silence surrounding stories and heritage of Kurds exists against the backdrop of the intentional silence regarding the horrific state-violence experienced by stateless communities like the Kurds. The silence is a refusal to acknowledge the histories that structure the lives of stateless and displaced communities. As we challenge these oppressive conditions throughout the world, it is important to also discuss and highlight the pleasures, such as sport, that can connect communities to each other and to others. Game time, let’s create livable and enjoyable worlds where our cultural heritages are celebrated and forms of power are named and dismantled!
Stanley Thangaraj studies immigrant and refugee communities in the U.S. South to understand how they manage the black-white racial logic through gender and the kinds of horizontal processes of race-making. His monograph Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity (NYU Press, 2015) looks at the relationship between race and gender in co-ethnic-only South Asian American sporting cultures. His book on Kurdish American, tentatively titled This is Kurdistan: Place-Making and Cultural Insistence in Kurdish America is forthcoming from University of Texas Press.
Meran Abdullah was born in Bigdawda, Kurdistan and moved to the United States in 1992, initially settling in Fargo, North Dakota, before making Nashville, Tennessee, his permanent home in 1996. A natural entrepreneur, Meran has successfully owned and operated his own car dealership for over two decades. Alongside his business ventures, soccer has been a lifelong passion. An exceptional athlete, he played varsity soccer in high school and earned the prestigious “Gatorade Circle of Champions Award” for the state of North Dakota during his senior year. Today, that enduring love for the game continues through his active play in several local leagues around Nashville.