What Races Are World Cup Stars?

Is the World Cup staying whiter than American sports?

Jun 10, 2026

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Unlike American football and basketball, soccer managed to stay a white-dominated sport into the 21st Century.

While Americans are constantly coming up with suggestions for rule changes to make soccer more exciting to us on TV, most of our suggestions would work to benefit explosive West Africans at the expense of whites with better endurance.

The soccer world has largely declined these American suggestions, although of course they can’t come out and explain what’s wrong with the Yanks’ ideas. They definitely can’t say that their fans seem to like having a sport where the biggest stars, such as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, have tended in recent decades to be white men of Southern European ancestry.

But in this century, the top stars have been getting more sub-Saharan, although not from sub-Saharan countries.

Below are pictures of Fox Sports top 100 soccer players from:

Top 100 Players In The 2026 FIFA World Cup, Ranked
Updated Jun. 8, 2026 4:29 p.m. ET

Only 3 of the top 100 are representing sub-Saharan countries in the World Cup.

Is Fox Sports the world’s best at ranking soccer players?

Probably not, but for reasons I’ve explained frequently over the years, it doesn’t much matter if rankings are kind of sloppy as long as they aren’t specifically intended to address the kind of questions I’m interested in. And while lots of people are interested in my interests, they are considered too uncouth to explore in the MSM.

Reading from left to right, #5 Michael Olise has a black father and a white-looking mother who is described as “Franco-Algerian” (which I am told means born in France of Muslim Algerian descent — Christians and Jews can’t qualify), #4 Dembele is black, Kane is white, #2 Mbappe is black & North African, and #1 Yamal is black & North African.

Thus, three of the top five soccer players in the world (if you trust Fox Sports) are a combination of sub-Saharan African and North African. There’s a new stereotype for you!